50 WOMEN ARTISTS

YOU SHOULD KNOW

50 WOMENYOUARTISTS
SHOULD KNOW

Christiane Weidemarm
Petra Larass
Melanie Klier

Prestel
Munich ■ Berlin ■ London ■ New York
Front cover from top to bottom:
Mary Cassatt, The Boating Party, c. 1893/94, see page 68
Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Portrait of Countess Golovin, c. 1800, see page 54
Tamara de Lempicka, The Telephone II, 1930, see page 96
Pipilotti Rist, Selfless In The Bath Of Lava, 1994, see page 159
Frontispiece: Gabriele Miinter, Jawlensky and Werefkin, 1909, see page 89

© Prestel Verlag, Munich • Berlin ■ London ■ New York, 2008

© for the works reproduced is held by the architects and artists, their heirs or assigns, with the exception of: Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois,
Sophie Calle, Camille Claudel, Hannah Hoch, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Kathe Kollwitz, Lee Krasner, Tamara de Lempicka, Gabriele Miinter,
Georgia O'Keeffe, Meret Oppenheim, Niki de Saint Phalle, Alfred Stieglitz and Ulay with VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008; Frida Kahlo with Banco de Mexico
Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008; Tacita Dean courtesy the artist. Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman
Gallery, New York and Paris; Tracey Emin with Tracey Emin, courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube London; Pipilotti Rist courtesy the artist and Hauser 81 Wirth
Zurich London; Kiki Smith with Kiki Smith, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York; Eva Hesse with The Estate of Eva Hesse. Hauser S' Wirth Zurich London

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Project management by Claudia Stauble

Translated from the German by Paul Aston, Rome and Jane Michael, Munich
Copy-edited by Chris Murray, Crewe
Cover and design by LIQUID, Agentur fur Gestaltung, Augsburg
Layout and production by zwischenschritt, Rainald Schwarz, Munich
Picture research by Claudia Stauble, Andrea WeiSenbach
Origination by ReproLine Mediateam
Printed and bound by MKT Print d.d., Ljubljana

Printed in Slovenia on acid-free paper

ISBN 978-3-7913-3956-6
 CONTENTS

10 CATHARINA VAN HEMESSEN 86 GABRIELE MUNTER

14 SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA 90 GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
18 LAVINIA FONTANA HANNAH HOCH
94
20 BARBARA LONGHI 96 TAMARA DE LEMPICKA
22 ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI 100 FRIDA KAHLO
26 CLARA PEETERS 104 LEE KRASNER
28 JUDITH LEYSTER 106 LOUISE BOURGEOIS
32 ELISABETTA SIRANI 110 MERET OPPENHEIM
34 MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN 114 NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE
00
m

RACHEL RUYSCH 116 EVA HESSE

42 ROSALBA CARRIERA 120 REBECCA HORN

44 GIULIA LAMA 124 BARBARA KRUGER

46 ANNA DOROTHEA THERBUSCH 128 MARINA ABRAMOVIC
00

ANGELICA KAUFFMANN 132 ISA GENZKEN

52 ADELAIDE LABILLE-GUIARD 134 JENNY HOLZER

54 ELISABETH VIGEE-LEBRUN 136 MONA HATOUM

58 MARGUERITE GERARD 140 SOPHIE CALLE
6o CONSTANCE MAYER 144 KIKI SMITH
62 ROSA BONHEUR 148 CINDY SHERMAN
64 BERTHE MORISOT 152 SHIRIN NESHAT
68 MARY CASSATT 156 PIPILOTTI RIST
72 EVA GONZALES 160 TRACEY EMIN

74 CECILIA BEAUX 164 TACITA DEAN

76 ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG FORBES

78 PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER 170 GLOSSARY

82 CAMILLE CLAUDEL 172 INDEX
00

KATHE KOLLWITZ 173 PHOTO CREDITS

10 I 11 CATHARINA VAN HEMESSEN

RAPHAEL

HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER

1519 Charles V becomes 1541 Spain conquers the Maya kingdom

Holy Roman Emperor in Central America

1520-1521 Circumnavigation of the 1550-1650 Witch-hunts

world by Ferdinand Magellan reach their peak
HIGH RENAISSANCE 1475-1600

..mm.mi...........mi...mi
1515 1520 1525 1530 1535 1540 1545 1550 1555
 1558 Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England 1588 Spanish Armada defeated

, D a.*.. (, . , ... 1590 Dome of St. Peter's Basilica completed

1571 Battle of Lepanto ends maritime K
supremacy of the Turks 1601 Homlet (William Shakespeare)

1562 Huguenot Wars of Religion in France 1602 Cape Colony in South Africa founded by the Dutch
1475-1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700

I I I I I I 1
.. 111.....Hill... ii.HMh.il .minimi.... 11111111
1560 1565 1570 1575 1580 1585 1590 1595 1600 160S 1610 1615 1620 1625 1630 1635 1640 1645

CATHARINA VAN HEMESSEN

Catharina van Hemessen was the first Flemish women painter whose work is known todaj. Her known oevre
is not large, but occupies a significant position in 16th-century art.

Catharina van Hemessen was mentioned as a
famous woman painter in a book about the
Netherlands published in 1567. She was of the same
generation of artists as Pieter Brueghel the Elder
and Frans Floris, who worked in Antwerp in the
16th century. Antwerp was at that time one of the
leading art centers of Europe. Around 300 painters
had master status there, and their pictures were
exported to Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Catharina's father Jan van Hemessen, considered
the inventor of the Flemish genre picture, ran a
successful master workshop in the city. Young
Catharina thus trained as a painter while still a girl,
helping her father with his paintings and finally
taking over commissions on her own behalf. It was
dress), the details of which are shown with great
skill. She carries a small dog under one arm, which
was a popular accessory in elegant society.
In 1554, Catharina married musician Chretien de
Morien. Two years later, she went with him to
Spain: Mary of Hungary had noticed the young
painter, and after her abdication as regent of the
Netherlands invited her to her court in Madrid.
When the art-loving patroness, whose appearance
we know from a portrait by Titian, died in 1558,
she left the artistic couple a generous pension.
No works are known from the period after her return
to the Netherlands. She died in Antwerp around 1587.
Born in Antwerp. Trained by her
1528

father Jan van Hemessen, work¬

at the time quite normal for workshops to be run as ing with him in his workshop.
1548 Paints a self-portrait and the Girl
family businesses, but daughters and sons rarely
at the Spinet.
worked under their own names. The result is that 1554 Marries Chretien de Morien.
Works for the Spanish court,
many artists of both sexes have disappeared into
c. 1587 Dies in Antwerp.
oblivion and their works can no longer be clearly
FURTHER READING:
identified.
Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda
Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art /
Early Masterworks of Portrait Painting Knopf, New York, 1976
However, Catharina van Hemessen signed her Delia Gaze (ed.). Dictionary of Women
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
paintings with her full name. A remarkable work is a
Chicago, 1997
self-portrait of her at 20, thought to be the earliest
surviving painting of an artist at work on a self-por¬
trait. It is signed top left: EGO CATERINA DE /
HEMESSEN ME / PINXI1548 // ETATIS / SV/E /20
("I, Catharina van Hemessen, painted myself in 1548
at the age of 20"). Among her earliest masterpieces
is also the Girl at the Spinet (1548), showing her sister
Christina as a young girl at the keyboard, though
the girl looks remarkably like Catharina. Portraits
remained Catharina's specialism. Most of her
pictures date from 1548 to 1554, and are small-for¬
mat. Her clientele paid very well for them. The left page:
Portrait of a Lady, 1551, oil on panel,
Portrait of a Lady from 1551 is now in the London 23 x 18 cm, National Gallery, London
National Gallery collection. It shows a dignified lady
above:
dressed appropriately for her social class wearing Self-Portrait,1548, tempera on panel,
red sleeves and a transparent haube (small head¬ 31 x 24.5 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel
 rAT'ir-.n; A £. Mfc/V. C5

pi

.Y , ■
left page:
Girl at the Spinet,
1548, oil on panel,
30.5 x 24.3 cm, Wallraf-Richartz
Museum, Cologne

above:
Portrait of a Lady, after 1550,
oil on panel, 40.9 x 39.1 cm.
The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle
 14 | 15 SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA

CATHARINA VAN HEMESSEN

1492 b.Marguerite de Navarre, poet of 1515 b. Teresa of Avila, Spanish

1541 Spain conquers the Maya kingdom in Central America
the early French Renaissance religious teacher and mystic
1543 Copernicus'theory of 1555 Peace of
1501-1504 David (Michelangelo)
heliocentric universe Augsburg
HIGH RENAISSANCE 147S-I600

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1480 1485 1490 1495 1500 1505 1510 1515 1520 1525 1530 1535 1540 1545 1550 1555 1560 1565
PETER PAUL RUBENS

1571 Battle of Lepanto ends maritime

1643 Louis XIV becomes
supremacy of the Turks
1633 Galileo brought King of France
1590 Dome of St. Peter's Basilica completed before the 1648 End of Thirty
Inquisition Years' War
1475 1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700

.... .
1570 1575 1580
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1583 1S90
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1595 1600 1605 1610 1615 1620
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1625 1630 1635 1640 1645 1650 1655

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA
mth her expressive portraits and humoristic family pictures, Sofonisba Anguissola was regarded as the
most successful female artist of the Italian Renaissance. She was recognized by major contemporaries such
as Michelangelo and Giorgio Vasari, and Peter Paul Rubens even copied her on several occasions.

Amilcare Anguissola, a nobleman from Cremona, Return to Italy

was greatly disappointed that the longed-for male Among the clauses of her agreement with the court
heir put in an appearance only after six daughters. was one stating that upon completion of her duties,
All six daughters received a broadly based education she would be entitled to an arranged marriage with a
in music, painting, languages, literature, and philo¬ man of appropriate standing. So, accompanied by her
sophy—not only as a substitute dowry, but also in new husband, Don Fabricio di Moncada, Anguissola
response to contemporary fashion. Primarily as a set off to return to Italy and settle in Palermo. It
result of her remarkable talent, the eldest of the six, seems to have been more than just a whim of nature
Sofonisba, received artistic training together with that di Moncada should drown in a shipwreck and
her sister, Elena; they studied between 1546 and Anguissola, on her way home, should fall in love
1551 under Bernardino Cami and Bernardino Gatti with the captain of the ship, the Genoese nobleman
(II Sojaro). Sofonisba's ambitious father skillfully Orazio Lomellino, during the journey to Genoa. They
arranged contacts with rulers and artists in order to married without the permission of the King that
make her paintings better known. same month and for the next 30 years the artist
maintained contact with artists and men of letters 1532 Born in Cremona.
1546 Starts her training under
Humorist Portraits from her house in Genoa: Peter Paul Rubens, who Bernardino Cami and Bernardino
Anguissola was 20 years old when she painted her had copied several of her paintings in Spain on the Gatti.
1559 Becomes a lady-in-waiting and
best-known picture, Three Sisters Playing Chess. The
art teacher under King Philip II
detailed representation of an everyday domestic of Spain.
1625 Dies in Palermo.
scene, the first in Italian painting, was very unusual
at the time. So, too, was the highly expressive por¬ FURTHER READING:
Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, Sofonisba
trayal of physiognomy: the youngest sister Europa is
Anguissola, Rizzoli International,
laughing spontaneously at Minerva's surprised reac¬ New York, 1992
Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Maria Kusche,
tion as their elder sister, Lucia, is in the process of
Sofonisba Anguissola: A Renaissance
carrying out a clever move and looks at the viewer, Woman, National Museum of Women in
the Arts, Washingston, DC, 1995
confident of victory. Even the art chronicler Giorgio
Vasari was enchanted by the picture's charm and
realism.

At the Spanish Court

Thus Sofonisba Anguissola became famous as a
portraitist beyond the boundaries of Italy, and in
1559 King Philip II of Spain invited her to become left page:
lady-in-waiting and art teacher to Queen Isabella of The Artist's Sister Wearing a Nun's Habit,
1551, oil on canvas, 75 x 60 cm,
Valois, who was only 14 years old at the time. They Southampton City Art Gallery
became close friends, and when the Regent died ten
left:
years later, Sofonisba left the court grief-stricken. Portrait of King Philip II, c. 1565,
She had painted all the members of the royal family; oil on canvas, 88.3 x 72.4 cm,
Museo del Prado, Madrid
even the Pope commissioned a portrait of the Queen
painted by Anguissola. above: Portrait of the Artist at the Easel,
1556, oil on canvas, 66 x 57 cm, Muzeum
Lancut, Zamek
16 I 17

Renaissance
The word "Renaissance" means rebirth; in the
context of art history it is applied to the rediscov¬
ery of classical antiquity from the 14th century
onwards. Man and his life on Earth became once
more the focus of art and literature. The Early
Renaissance originated largely in Florence, but
the center of the High Renaissance at the begin¬
ning of the 16th century became Rome when, on
the instructions of the pope, St. Peter's was built
and numerous important artists settled in the city.

instructions of the Duke of Mantua, visited her, as

did Anthony van Dyck. The latter sketched her,
by now almost 90 years old and virtually blind, in
1624, one year before her death in Palermo.
In addition to her own creative work, Sofonisba
Anguissola was always an enthusiastic teacher,
either of her sisters, of the Queen of Spain, or, later,
of her pupils of both sexes. She was also a keen
miniaturist. She was famous not only as a talented
artist virtuoso, but also as a cultivated Grandezza.

Three Sisters Playing Chess, 1555,

oil on canvas, 72 x 97 cm,
Muzeum Norodowe, Poznan
18 | 19 LAVINIA FONTANA

PETER PAUL RUBENS

1567 b. Claudio Monteverdi, Italian composer

1519 b. Catherine de' Medici, consort 1541 Completion of frescoes in the
1571 Battle of Lepanto ends maritime
of Henri II of France Sistine Chapel (Michelangelo)
supremacy of the Turks

left:
Venus and Cupid, 1592, oil on canvas,
72.5 x 60 cm, Musee des Beaux Arts,
Rouen

below:
Family Portrait, end of 16th century,
oil on canvas, 85 x 105 cm, Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Brera, Milan
 DIEGO VELAZQUEZ
1609 Expulsion of Moors from Spain
1590 Dome of St. Peter's Basilica
completed
1601 Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
1475-1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700
UillillllllllllllillllllllllllMllilMIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIII MIIIIIII|iiiiiiMiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMmiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiii[|iiiiiiiiiii|iiiiiiimiiiiMimiii
1590 1595 1600 1605 1610
LAVINIA FONTANA
As an artist of the Italian Renaissance, Lavinia Fontana emancipated herself in typo wajs: firstly,
as a successful painter of portraits and history paintings, she was the main breadwinner for a family of If
and secondly, she was the first woman artist to paint female nudes.
Her career started classically enough: her father,
Prospero Fontana, a reputable painter of history
paintings in Bologna, recognized his daughter's
talent; as she was his only child, it was planned that
she should inherit his studio. Prospero Fontana
steered his daughter's fate in a well-directed and
far-sighted manner. Initially, he took over her
artistic education himself and even saw to it that
she studied the sculptures in his admired collection
of antique works and casts. This privileged start
enabled her later to produce highly sensuous paint¬
ings with female nude figures—an unheard-of and
risky venture which to date no female artist had
permitted herself to attempt. Her last painting,
Minerva Dressing, was a true masterpiece. She finally
completed her training under the Netherlandish
artist Denis Calvaert, who had once been a pupil of
Prospero and who ran an influential painting school.
Portrait Painter to the Aristocracy
Fontana soon acquired a reputation as the most
sought-after portrait painter of Bologna's upper
society. Her meticulous style appealed above all
because it was influenced by fashion and reflected in
every detail the costly attributes of the elaborately
decorated costumes. The people themselves look,
by contrast, unapproachable and stiff as they gaze
self-assuredly out of the dark paintings. Even
Pope Gregory XIII commissioned her to paint his
portrait in 1580, thus making it possible for her
to find clients among the clergy. Lavinia Fontana
received for her individual or group portraits fees
more generous than those of virtually any other
artist of her time.
Exchange of Roles in the Family
In 1577, she produced her first Self-Portrait, which
she designed along the lines of the works by her role
model, her somewhat older fellow-artist Sofonisba
Anguissola. She shows herself playing the spinet, a
sign that she was highly educated; her air, as she
1630 Building of Taj Mahal commences
1618 Start of Thirty Years'War
1620 The Mayflower lands in America
1
1615 1620 162 5 15 30 15 3 5 iK/in ic/n: nccn -iccc iccn -> c cc ■, r-m
looks at the viewer, is self-confident and assured. In
the background, we can clearly make out her studio,
and an inscription explicitly refers to the fact that
she "painted the picture of her face herself from the
mirror." Not without reason, for the recipient of the
picture was no less a person than her father-in-law,
a prosperous merchant from Imola. Giovanni Paolo
Zappi, the selected bridgegroom, was also formerly
a pupil of Prospero Fontana. His own talent was
rather mediocre, but he recognized the talent of his
future wife and allowed her to retain responsibility
for the studio. He himself functioned as his wife's
manager and helped her with the execution of many
of her commissions. Lavinia also had the strength to
1552 Born in Bologna, the daughter of
give birth to 11 children in rapid succession.
the well-known painter and
teacher Prospero Fontana.
Receives a thorough artistic
Recognized Painter of History Paintings
training under her father and
Some years were to pass before Pope Clement VII then the Netherlandish artist
Denis Calvaert.
finally summoned her to Rome, where many of her
1577 Marries Giovanni Paolo Zappi
colleagues worked. She had painted the Triumph of from Imola.
1589 Commissioned for the Escorial
St. Hyacynth, the altarpiece for the chapel in Santa
in Madrid.
Sabina, which was greeted with great enthusiasm. 1603 Moves to Rome with her family.
1614 Dies in Rome
Lavinia's style became more lively and less focused
on detail. She received further commissions for altar FURTHER READING:
Caroline P. Murphy, Lavinia Fontana:
paintings and also for history paintings, becoming
A Painter and Her Patrons in Sixteenth-
the first Renaissance artist to achieve recognition century Bologna, Yale University Press,
New Haven, CT, 2003
in this genre. Lavinia painted a total of more than
ioo paintings, a remarkable and comprehensive
oeuvre.
Self-Portrait at the Spinet, 1577, oil on
canvas, 27 x 24 cm, Accademia Nazionale
di San Luca, Rome
 BARBARA LONGHI
20 | 21

1529 First siege of Vienna by the Turks

1541 Completion of frescoes in the
Sistire Chapel (Michelangelo) ls62 Huguenot wars of Religion in France
1532 b. Orlando di Lasso,
Flemish composer

Sextus Tarquinius and Lucretia,

undated, oil on canvas, 98 x 146 cm
Private collection
 DIEGO VELAZQUEZ
JUDITH LEYSTER
1587 Execution of Mary Stuart,
Queen of Scots
1611 Gustavus (II) Adolphus
becomes King of Sweden
1475-1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700
..HU.IIIIMIIIIIM
1S90 1595 1600 1605 1610 1615
BARBARA LONGHI
The delicate, introverted figures in Barbara Longhi’s devotional pictures correspond more closely to the
tradition of the High Renaissance than to the lively Mannerism that represented the spirit of the age in
'which she lived.
Like her brother Francesco, Barbara Longhi grew up
in Ravenna in the studio of her father, Luca Longhi,
where she learned the craft of painting from her
earliest years. The sparse information about her life
seems to indicate that Barbara Longhi never left her
native town; in general she seems to have lived a
rather retiring life.
In line with the tradition of family studios, Barbara
assisted her father with his studio's larger com¬
missions. She was also required to copy her father's
famous works in order to increase their distribution.
It is therefore extremely difficult to distinguish
between the styles of the two artists, and to deter¬
mine who produced which paintings. To date,
only 15 paintings have been attributed to Barbara
Longhi; some of them are signed with the mono¬
gram BLF (Barbara Longhi fecit: "Barbara Longhi
painted it").
Surprisingly enough, these works include only one
portrait. This seems remarkable, as Barbara
Longhi's expressive portraits in particular were
specifically praised, for example by Munizio
Manfredi, the head of the academy in Bologna.
Painter of Icons
Among Barbara Longhi's works are a number of
paintings of the Madonna, whom she preferred to
depict in small-format devotional compositions.
Here, too, it is easy to understand the recognition
afforded her artistic skills: her representations of the
Virgin Mary and the Christ Child radiate a tender
beatitude. The figures are often grouped in a trian¬
gular composition before a curtain, with a section of
landscape seen in the background. This corresponds
to a popular composition found among Renaissance
artists in Florence, including Raphael and Leonardo
da Vinci. The viewer's gaze is thus concentrated on
tranquil figures. The representation of the divine
individuals is not so much intended to reflect their
personal characteristics, but rather to depict an
idealized image of spiritual virtue.
1664 Newton's Binomial
1628 Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois,
Theorem
Queen of France
1668 The Return of the
Prodigal Son
(Rembrandt van Rijr
JJJJJJJJJJ LLLLiilU .111111 n III111111111II....... .....
1620 1625 1630 1635 1640 1645 1650 1655 1660 1665 1670 1675
These devotional pictures, which were very popular
as private altarpieces, were designed to reflect the
views of the Counter-Reformation and the new cult
of the Virgin Mary. Barbara Longhi painted numer¬
ous variations showing the Madonna: with the
sleeping Infant; with Christ and John the Baptist as
children; reading; or as a witness to the mystical
marriage of St. Catherine.
Even the art chronicler and painter Giorgio Vasari
wrote admiringly of the works of Barbara Longhi,
although she was only 16 at the time: "Her clear
lines and the soft brilliance of her colors are unique."
The fact that she was even mentioned in his famous
Lives of the Artists was due to her technical skills
1552 Born in Ravenna, Italy, the
rather than her stylistic characteristics. Barbara
daughter of the Mannerist painter
Longhi devoted her attention primarily to the con¬ Luca Longhi.
First painting lessons from her
servative ideals of the Renaissance and refused to
father.
study the new ideas of Mannerism. Unfortunately, 1590-1605 Most productive period.
Frequent motifs are portraits and
only very few of her works are dated; her most
representations of the Madonna.
productive period seems to have been between 1638 Dies in Ravenna.
1590 and 1605.
FURTHER READING:
Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda
Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-7950, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art / Knopf,
New York, 1976
Delia Gaze (ed.), Dictionary of Women
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
Chicago, 1997
left:
Virgin Mary with the Infant Jesus,
undated, oil on canvas, 57 x 48.5 cm,
Museo Civico, Vicenza
above:
St. Catherine of Alexandria, undated,
oil on canvas, 69 x 54 cm, Pinacoteca
Nazionale, Bologna
 ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
22 | 23

PETER PAUL RUBENS

REMBRANDT

1588 Spanish Armada defeated 1620 The Mayflower

lands in America
1590 Dome of St. Peter's Basilica completed

1585 Anglo-Spanish War 1609 Expulsion of Moors from Spain

1475-1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700

111111" '1 n "11" " 11" 1111"111 .. mi..... in

1585 1590 1595 1600 1605 1610 1615
1540 1545 1550 1555 1560

Susanna and the Elders, 1610, oil on canvas,

178 x 125 cm, Schloss Weissenstein,
Schonbornsche Kunstsammlungen,
Pommersfelde
 1642 The Night Watch (Rembrandt van Rijn)
1643 Louis XIV becomes King of France
("The Sun King")
1633 Galileo brought before the Inquisition
■^llllllllllllllll!'lllllllllllilllllllllllllllimimmm....Minin.....
ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
To this day, the naturalistic style, the luminous colors, and the dramatic use of light in the paintings
of Artemesia Gentileschi leave a deep and sometimes disturbing impression on the viewer.
The life and work of this important representative
of the Italian Baroque would provide a fascinating
subject for a novel—Artemisa Gentileschi was an
outstanding woman who possessed not only the
courage, but also the rare talent to produce uncom¬
promising art.
Artemisia was a pupil of her father Orazio
Gentileschi, a successful Baroque painter in Rome.
In order to perfect her technical skills, he appren¬
ticed her to his artist friend Agostino Tassi. The
latter, however, made sexual advances to his talented
pupil; when he failed to keep his promise of marriage,
the affair was taken to court. As the main protagonist
in the first public rape case, Artemisia was humiliat¬
ed, and acquired a dubious reputation, especially as
the trial ended without a clear verdict. In i6n, she
was obliged to leave Rome. She went to Florence,
married, and, thanks to her outstanding artistic skills,
soon received a number of public commissions.
Moreover, she was the only woman to be admitted
to the Accademia del Disegno.
Murder in Dramatic Chiaroscuro
The painting Judith Beheading Holofernes, which is
accorded a central importance in Artemesia's oeuvre,
was produced shortly after her move to Florence.
The Bible story, in which Judith and her maid saved
the beleaguered Jews by decapitating the enemy
king Holofernes, was treated by Artemisia in various
paintings. It also inspired numerous other artists in
her circle, including Orazio Gentileschi, Caravaggio,
and Tintoretto. Subjects like this were very popular
at the time, possibly as a result of the social unrest
resulting from the Reformation and the Counter-
Reformation.
What is new and almost arrogant in Artemisia
Gentileschi's painting is the realistic, merciless
interpretation of the story, which is not played down
by the introduction of a moralizing or religious tone.
With a determined, unemotional expression, the
two women go to work with the strength and skill
1680 b. Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer
1668 Building of Versailles commences
1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780
hum.....minim
of butchers as they behead Holofernes, who is
writhing in mortal fear.
The dramatic elements of the scene are supported
by a dynamic composition, clear colors, and a striking
contrast of light and dark. The gestures and appear¬
ance of the figures are strongly expressive. Seldom
can one establish autobiographical elements in a
picture as clearly as here, if one interprets the paint¬
ing as a cold-blooded and calculated act of revenge
against Artemisia's aggressor, Tassi. Gentileschi
wrote to one of her clients at the time: "I shall show
what a woman is capable of. You will find Caesar's
courage in the soul of a woman.''
1593 Born 8 July in Rome, the daughter
Caravaggio's Worthy Successor
of the painter Orazio Gentileschi.
In the contrasts of light and dark, and in the realistic Serves her apprenticeship in her
father's studio and under
portrayal in her dramatic representations, Artemisia
Agostino Tassi.
clearly followed the much-imitated Caravaggio, and 1611 After a rape trial against Tassi,
she moves to Florence, where she
can thus be included in the broad circle of
married and is admitted to the
Caravaggisti. Accademia del Disegno.
1622 Returns to Rome,
Artemisia Gentileschi finally returned to Rome,
c. 1630 Moves to Naples.
where she worked primarily as an important portrait 1635 She is called to the English court,
an invitation she accepts two
artist. In 1630 she went to Naples, until she was
years later.
persuaded seven years later, by King Charles of 1652/53 Dies, probably in Naples.
England, to move to his court in London. Her elderly
FURTHER READING:
father was working there on the decoration of the Mary D. Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi,
Princeton University Press, Princeton,
Queen's House in Greenwich. After her father's
NJ, 1989
death, Artemisia returned to Naples, where she Mieke Bal (ed.), The Artemisia Files:
Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and
clearly suffered from poor health and financial
Other Thinking People, University of
difficulties. She died in 1652/53. Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005
Judith W. Mann (ed.), Artemisia
Gentileschi: Taking Stock, Brepols,
Turnhout (Belgium), 2005
La Pittura (Self-Portrait as the Allegory of
Painting), 1630, oil on canvas, 97 x 74 cm,
St. James's Palace, Collection of Her
Majesty the Queen, London
24 | 25 below:
Caravaggisti c. 1621, oil on canvas, Palazzo
Lucretia,
Cattaneo-Adorno, Genoa
The painter Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610),
named Caravaggio after his birthplace, attracted right page:
great attention with the dramatic chiaroscuro Judith Beheading HoloferneSj 1595/96,
oil on canvas, 145 x 195 cm, Galleria
(contrasts of light and dark) in his works, a style Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo
that influenced artists throughout Europe. During Barberini, Rome

the Baroque, this style was known as Caravaggism

and was imitated especially in Italy, the
Netherlands, France, Spain, and Germany. Orazio
and Artemisia Gentileschi, Francisco Ribalta,
Jusepe de Ribera, Hendrick Terbrugghen, Gerrit
van Honthort, and Georges de La Tour were all
important Caravaggisti (followers of Caravaggio).
. .
 CLARA PEETERS
26 I 27

PETER PAUL RUBENS

1618-1648 Thirty
Years' War
1601 Hamlet (William Shakespeare)

1598 b. Eleonora Gonzaga

1475-1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700

Still-Life with Fish and Cat, after 1620,

oil on panel, 34.3 x 47 cm.
National Museum of Women in the Arts,
Washington DC
 JAN VERMEER
1699 Austria dominant power
1643 Louis XIV becomes King of France 1668 Building of Versailles commences in Europe
("The Sun King")
1685 b. Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer
1630 Building of Taj Mahal commences less Britain starts trading with the West Indies
1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780

..1'11........mm............. ii 111 1111111.1111" 1111" l " 1 *.1.1 LililHJ

1630 1635 1640 1645 1650 1655 1660 1665
1670 1675 1680 1685 1690 1695 1700 1705 1710 1715

CLARA PEETERS
Virtually nothing is known about the life of the Flemish artist Clara Peeters, who lived and worked at the
beginning of the 17th century. Nonetheless, her impressive pictures bear witness to the fact that she was one
of the founders of still-life painting.

There are, indeed, remarkably few clues about Clara
Peeters, and even they seem to be uncertain. Is it
really possible that the Clara Peeters who was listed
in the Register of Baptisms in 1594 in Antwerp is one
and the same as the artist who, just 13 years later, in
1607, put her signature to her first small-format,
lovingly detailed, still-lifes? Some experts think it
questionable that such a young girl should already
be so famous that her works were not executed, as
was normally the case, under the guise of a studio.
All the same, it is certain that the almost 80 paint¬
ings that have survived and have been attributed to
her indicate that she continued to paint until well
after 1630. A final picture, dated 1657, was also
attributed to Clara Peeters, but it has not survived.
Even so, Clara Peeters signed at least 30 paintings.
We have no information at all about her artistic
training. Nonetheless it can be assumed that such a
the cat is almost tangible as it lies in wait, having'
caught a slippery fish. Beside it, on a gleaming silver
tray, lies an opened oyster with its rough shell and
soft flesh. The contrasting surfaces of the different
objects seem to compete with each other. It is
remarkable how the space maintains an impression
of depth despite the fact that very few items overlap
each other. Arrangements like these do in fact recall
the works of Clara Peeters' supposed teacher, Osias
Beert, while further clues seem to point to the circle
around Jan Brueghel the Elder.
In her elaborately detailed self-portrait, Clara Peeters
studies the exclusive objects that we find in her
paintings, while the artist herself gazes earnestly
c. 1594 Born in the Netherlands.
and thoughtfully out of the picture. Here Clara
Believed to have studied in
Peeters adeptly links the genre of the self-portrait Antwerp under Osias Beert.
Died probably during the first
with that of the still-life. In doing so she produces a
half of the 17th century.
convincing analysis of herself as an artist and a con- 1639 Marries Henri Joosen.

young talent must have served an apprenticeship noisseur.

FURTHER READING:
under a recognized master. This could have been the Pamela Hibbs Decoteau, Clara Peeters,
7594-ca. 1640: And the Development of
still-life painter Osias Beert, who was based in
Still-Life Painting in Northern Europe,
Antwerp. Luca Verlag, Lingen, 1992
A further point of reference is the marriage year of
1639, also recorded in the Register of Baptisms, with
a certain Henri Joosen. Later on she is thought to
have worked in Amsterdam and The Hague.

Exquisite Still-Lifes
There is no doubt that Clara Peeters was a success¬
ful artist. In many of her paintings we find represen¬
tations of valuable porcelain vases and cut glass,
exotic shells, and gleaming gold coins. All these pre¬
cious objects were to be found in the "cabinets of
curiosities" of the noblemen of the time. The aristo¬
cratic collections, expensive items, and Peeters'
large-format paintings indicate that she worked for
wealthy collectors. left:
undated, oil on
Still-Life with Artichoke,
In Still-Life with Fish and Cat, the objects are executed panel, 33 x 46 cm, Private collection
precisely and with a remarkable attention to detail.
above:
Skillfully, she adds spots of light and surrounds Self-Portrait,undated, oil on panel,
objects with mysterious shadows. The soft fur of 37.5 x 50.2 cm, whereabouts unknown
28 J 29 JUDITH LEYSTER

REMBRANDT

1634 b. Marie-Madeleine
de Lafayette, French
1618-1648 Thirty Years'War
writer

1475-1600 HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700

llllllllllllllllllll
I
1590 1595 1600 1605 1640 1645

The Concert, c. 1631-1633, oil on canvas,

60.9 x 86.3 cm, Wallace and Wilhelmina
Holladay Collection, Washington DC
 JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU
i Louis XIV becomes King of France
( The Sun King") 1668 Building of Versailles commences

1655 Britain starts trading with the West Indies 1685 b. Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer

1648 Netherlands gains 1672 Building of St. Paul's Cathedral 1689 Peter I the Great becomes Tsar of Russia
independence from Spain in London commences
1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780

^!: 1111.......... mum ....in.. 1111111 I I.

1700 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 1735

JUDITH LEYSTER
Singers, musicians, comedians, and drinkers in congenial company seem to enjoy life to the full in the paintings
°j Judith Leyster. Although the Netherlandish painter was very successful during her lifetime, she was later
forgotten and for many years her paintings were thought to have been the work of Frans Hals.

"There are numerous women with artistic experience beside the marketplace despite the fierce competi¬
who are famous to this day, and whose work stands tion. Business was good, and she was even able to
up favorably to comparison with that of men. Among afford to take on two apprentices.
them, however, it is above all Judith Leyster whose
name is mentioned with great respect. She really In the Shadow of Frans Hals
was a lodestar in the art world ..." That was how It is assumed that Leyster studied for three years
Theodorus Schrevellius described the painter Judith under Pieter de Grebber, a painter of historical
Leyster in 1647 in his book about the city of Haarlem. pictures and portraits, before she started to work in
She was born there in 1609 as the youngest of eight the studio of the famous master of the Haarlem
children of a man who was both a cloth-maker and School, Frans Hals. Her early paintings are strongly
brewery owner. influenced by him, but also by his younger brother,
Dirck Hals, who was famous for his high-spirited
Merry Musicians genre paintings.
Looking at Leyster's pictures, it is easy to imagine It is thought that it was in the studio of Frans Hals
how she, the daughter of a brewery owner, must 1609 Born in Haarlem as the eighth
that Leyster met the painter Jan Miense Molenaer,
child of the cloth-maker and
have watched the merry feasting in the inns, record¬ whom she married in 1636 and with whom she then brewery owner Jan Willensz.
ing the moment as a true-to-life portrayal in her Leyster, and baptized on 28 July.
moved to Amsterdam. From this point she seems to
Served an apprenticeship under
cheerful genre pictures. Slightly tipsy journeymen have supported more actively her husband in the the painter Pieter de Grebber.
1628 First mention of her in Samuel
toast each other, singing a song to the sounds of family studio, as well as their joint art dealer busi¬
van Ampzing's Description and
lute and fiddle and flirting with the girls. She also ness. Most of the paintings attributed to her today Praise of the City of Haarlem in
Holland.
liked to paint children, as can be seen in Boy Playing were produced before her marriage.
Works in the studio of the painter
the Flute of c. 1635. After her death in 1660, she was almost entirely for¬ Frans Hals.
1633 Becomes a member of the Guild
As we can clearly see in the painting The Concert, gotten, despite the remarkable success she enjoyed
of St. Luke in Haarlem.
despite all the movement the gestures and expres¬ during her lifetime. Many of her works were thought 1636 Marries Jan Miense Molenaer,
and they move to Amsterdam.
sions of the figures are not random, but rather are to have been lost or were initially attributed to Frans
1648 They return to live in Haarlem,
consciously and lovingly executed. The musician Hals, until 1893, when the Louvre discovered Leyster's and then in Heemstede near
Amsterdam.
looks cheekily out of the picture and holds the long monogram under the master's signature. Thus she
1660 Dies in Heemstede, funeral being
neck of the lute so pointedly towards the viewer that was gradually given the attention she deserves. held on 10 February.

it adds depth to the composition. The faces are

FURTHER READING:
individually and emotionally portrayed but are quite Frima Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster:
A Woman Painter in Holland's Golden Age,
lacking in coarse features. The figures emerge from
Davaco, Doornspijk, the Netherlands,
dark monochrome backgrounds, and are often illu¬ 1989
James A. Welu and Pieter Biesboer,
minated by candlelight.
Judith Leyster: A Dutch Master and Her
In her self-portrait of c. 1630, Leyster presents her¬ World, Yale University Press, New York,
1993
self to posterity as a self-confident woman, whose
cheerful gaze draws the viewer's attention to the
picture of the musicians at which she points with
her paintbrush. In fact she seems to have been a
courageous woman: at the age of 24 she was the
1630, oil on canvas,
Self-Portrait, c.
first woman artist to apply for admission to the 75 x 66 cm, National Gallery of Art,
Guild of St. Luke, opening her own studio directly Washington DC
30 | 31 The Jolly Toper,1629, oil on canvas,
89 x 85 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem
Boy Playing the Flute, c. 1635,
oil on canvas, 73 x 62 cm,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

mam
32 | 33 ELISABETTA SIRANI

DIEGO VELAZQUEZ

JUDITH LEYSTER 1668 Building of

Versailles
1637 First public opera house commences
opened, in Venice 1655 Britain starts trading with the West Indies
1618 Start of Thirty Years'War
HIGH RENAISSANCE BAROQUE 1600-1700

II I I 1 1 I I 1 III I I I I I I I III
1 I I I1 1 I I I I I I I I
1645 1650 1660 1665 1670 1675
1605 1610
 1745 Maria Theresa of Austria becomes
Holy Roman Empress

1749 b. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

1718 Oedipus (Voltaire)
1687 Oroonoko (Aphra Behn) German writer
1721 Brandenburg Concertos
1756 b. Wolfgang Amadeus
(Johann Sebastian Bach) Mozart, Austrian
composer
1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780
1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790

■1 I 1 1 I I I II I I I I I I I II I I 11 1 1 1 * " 1 " 1 " 111 U I.IN

......Mini:.INI!!.HIM:.
1680 1685 1690 1695 1700 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765

ELISABETTASIRANI
Elisabetta Siram was one of the most productive and most admired artists of her day: in a period of
just 1] years she produced nearly 200pictures. She formed a group of female assistants who collaborated
on her works and often completed them.

Elisabetta Sirani was born in 1638 in Bologna, where Mysterious Death

her father Giovanni Andrea Sirani was likewise an
artist and an assistant to Guido Reni. He only
noticed Elisabetta's extraordinary talent for drawing
when his attention was repeatedly drawn to it by
critic Count Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Sirani's father
became her first teacher. When he had to give up
painting because of arthritis, Elisabetta took over
as head of the workshop. She soon had her two
sisters Barbara and Anna Maria learning the trade,
and gathered around her more than a dozen other
female pupils.
Guido Reni as Inspiration
A large proportion of Sirani's pictures have religious
subjects, but she also did portraits and mythological
scenes. Particularly common subjects in her work
are the Virgin and Child and the Holy Family. In
many of these works, her admiration for Guido Reni
is evident, but there are also echoes of Caravaggio,
Elisabetta Sirani kept a chronological catalogue of
her pictures, which ends with entry 182; she died in
August 1665 aged only 27. The rumor quickly spread
that she had been poisoned, since she had com¬
plained of stomach pains for months. However, the
trial of her servant LuciaTolomelli ended in a not-
guilty verdict. An autopsy identified a stomach ulcer
as the cause. As a member of the Accademia di
San Luca in Rome, Sirani was given a civic funeral
by the city of Bologna. Her premature death did
nothing to impair her fame, and the first biography
of her was published little more than ten years after
her death.
1638 Born 8 January in Bologna.
Trains with her father Giovanni
Andrea, and later takes over his
studio.
Becomes a member of the
Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
Keeps a catalogue of her works,
which ends at entry 182.
1665 Dies in Bologna aged 27.

the Carracci, and Francesco Albani. An example is

FURTHER READING:
the Madonna and Child with St.John the Baptist, an Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda
Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950,
almost playful rendering of the young Jesus on his
Los Angeles County Museum of Art /
mother's arm, talking to young St John the Baptist. Knopf, New York, 1976
Adelina Modesti, Elisabetta Sirani.
The group is set against a dark background, so that
Una virtuoso del Seicento bolognese,
the Madonna, shown in semi-profile, has an almost Editrice Compositori, Bologna, 2004

aristocratic elegance. The whole scene is lit with

a diffuse light that lends the figures pearl-colored
flesh tones. The child Jesus touches his mother's
neck with his right hand, while in his other hand
he holds a willow rod with a banner saying Ecce qui
toljlit peccata] mundi, referring to his role as
Redeemer. The picture appears to be harking back
to Reni's late work, but in its execution it is more
sentimental and collected. left page:
Madonna and Child with St. John
the Baptist,undated, oil on wood,
98 x 73 cm, Galleria dei Dipiniti Antichi
della Cassa di Risparmio di Cesena

above:
Luigi Matelli, Self-Portrait of Elisabetta
Sirani Painting her Father, 19th century,
copperplate engraving
34 | 35 MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN

DIEGO VELAZQUEZ GIULIA LAMA

1668 Building of Versailles commences

1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780

I I II Hi
1650 1655 1660 1665 1675 1680 1685 1690 1695 1700 1705 1710

/. P/ialctna occ/At/t?.

-• jl'Jt/Jit fjaradf'oca.

Banana und Large Yellow Underwing Moth,

sheet XII of Metamorphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium, 1705, copperplate engraving
 1745 Maria Theresa of Austria becomes 1769 James Watt invents the 1789 George Washington
Holy Roman Empress steam engine becomes first President
1717 Mary Wortley Montague introduces
1749 b. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1772 James Cook discovers of the United States
inoculation to England
German writer 1789 Start of French Revolution
the Antarctic
1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790
1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1790-1840

.. ...11'1" "....in...... ..mm.....

imm. ..
1715 1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800

MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN

Fearless, adventurous, and ahead of her time—that was the cosmopolitan all-rounder Maria Sibjlla Merian.
As an at tist, natural philosopher, businesswoman, and publisher rolled into one, she made a unique contribution
to the visual understanding of flowers and insects in the 17th century.

Maria Sibylla Merian’s unparalleled career evolved
at a time when daughters of rich families learnt at
most just to read and write. In the Baroque age, a
woman's role was limited to running the household,
sewing, and praying. But "Merian" was a woman
people talked about. She lived in three pace-setting
centers of printing and publishing: first Frankfurt,
then Nuremberg, and later Amsterdam. Scholars
and biologists recognized her greatness. Swedish
naturalist Carl von Linne (Linnaeus), the father of
modern botanical and zoological classification, read
Merian, and referred to her and her artistic but
precise illustrations many times in connection with
his own work.
The Splendors of Flowers and Insects
It all started with Merian's boundless enthusiasm
for flowers and micro-creatures. Even as a young
woman, she rescued insects from the dirt and took
them back to her own room, pinned out butterflies,
deceased father, engraver Matthaus Merian the
Elder. Published between 1675 and 1680 in
Nuremberg in three installations of 12 sheets each,
the book was so popular that it had to be reprinted.
They are flower studies of incomparable elegance,
and were used as pattern books for painting and
embroidery. Here too Maria Sibylla Merian played a
trick on her age, in creating items of commercial art
and earning money from them, which was a long
way from teaching painting and embroidery to
daughters of reputable citizens, as she did in parallel.
One aim was certainly not in her mind, i.e. to produce
dry, diagrammatic illustrations for scientific purpose.
Her output was conceived in quite a different spirit.
1647 Born 2 April in Frankfurt, the
Her books are an expression of esthetic, scientific
daughter of engraver Matthaus
edification, with every individual creature being set Merian the Elder (1593-1650). Her
father dies when she is three, and
in context with meticulous precision.
her mother marries flower painter
Jacob Marell, who notices his
stepdaughter's talent and
encourages it.
1665 Marries architectural painter

preserved pests in brandy, and painted every stage Johann Andreas Graff.
1670 Sets up a school for painting and
of a butterfly's development from the larva to the embroidery in Nuremberg.
1675-1680 Neues Blumenbuch
glorious creature emerging from a chrysalis. It was
1679-1683 Publishes both volumes
incidentally a passion that was awoken by a visit as of her scientific book Der Raupen
a 13-year-old to a silkworm factory and culminated wunderbare Verwandlung (The
Wonderful Transformation of
in her famous journey to Surinam. When 52, she Caterpillars).
sailed with her younger daughter to that terra incog¬ 1681 Returns to Frankfurt.
1685 Following her separation from
nita in northern South America, and spent two years Johann Andreas Graff, she lives
there studying the wonders of nature. The result an independent life in Holland,
bringing up her children by her¬
was her major work on insects, the Metamorphosis self.
1699 Travels to Surinam, returning
Insectorum Surinamesium, a fantastic world of wonders
1701.
in watercolors of beguiling delicacy and splendor of 1705 Her book on insects published
Metamorphosis Insectorum
color, full of accurate detail and minute renderings
Surinamesium.
of butterflies, beetles, and insects. Having done her 1717 Dies 13 January in Amsterdam.
research in the heat and rough jungle on the main¬
FURTHER READING:
land, she drew the pictures on the high seas in the Kim Todd, Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian
and the Secrets of Metamorphosis,
gloom of her cabin.
Harcourt, Orlando, 2007
In Neues Blumenbuch (New Book of Flowers), Merian
published her observations and illustrations as
Jakob Houbraken after Georg Gsell,
engravings of watercolors, thereby establishing a
Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian, 1717,
reputation to match that of her prematurely copperplate engraving
In's germanica L. (German Iris) from the Neues
Blumenbuch, 1675-1680, copperplate engraving

right page:
Gastropacha populifolia,
1679, watercolor and
opaque colors on parchment, 25.5 x 19.3 cm.
Archive of the Academy of Sciences,
St. Petersburg
■4-
 38 | 39 RACHEL RUYSCH
GIAMBATTISTA TIEPOLO

WILLIAM HOGARTH

1668 Building of Versailles commences

1685 b. Johann Sebastian Bach,

1626 b. Christina of Sweden 1667 Louis XIV introduces
German composer
the Paris Salon
1600-1700 BAROQUE

mu ii i ..........mu.
1615 1620 1625 1630 1635 1640 1645 1650
 1707 Union of England and Scotland
to form Great Britain
1699 Austria dominant power in Europe
1749 b. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer
1703 Building of Buckingham Palace in London commences
ROCOCO 1700-1780
1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790

MINI ....... i1'' n ii 111 ..mi.. . . .

..111111.1111..........mm.mum
15 1710 171S 1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 174S 1750
1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790

RACHEL RUYSCH
-Magnificent flowers of every imaginable species unfold like a glittering display of fireworks in the carefully
arranged flower still-lifes painted by one of the most famous Netherlands artist of the 17th and 18th centuries.
She devoted her talents throughout her long life exclusively to flower paintings, which sold well.

Rachel Ruysch's artistic career was not encouraged, Even the delicate butterflies, snails and caterpillars,
as in the case of so many of her fellow female as well as the fruits and fungi, recall the passage of
artists, by a painter father. Instead, it was the young time.
woman's powers of scientific observation that her
father trained, since he was a famous professor of Member of the Painters' Guild and Court Artist
botany and anatomy in Amsterdam. He wrote the Her paintings were greatly in demand and sold for
catalogue for the Botanical Garden in Amsterdam, unusually high prices. Ruysch, however, despite the
enlarging its stock to make it one of the largest in demand, remained true to her own high standards.
the world. He also established the first Museum of So time-consuming were her still-lifes, that she
Natural History, and aroused international interest seldom painted more than two or three per year.
with his collection of anatomical specimens. It is not This did not change when she married the portrait
surprising, therefore, that his attentive daughter painter Juriaen Pool in 1695, and bore him ten chil¬
should link all these scientific stimuli with her artistic dren. She did not give up her demanding painting,
talent. Her interests lay in flowers and reptiles, and which offered little chance of development. In 1701,
at the age of 15 she was apprenticed to the flower 1664 Born in Amsterdam, the daughter
she became a member of the Painters' Guild in The
of Frederick Ruysch, a professor
painter Willem van Aelst. Hague. of botany and anatomy.
Serves an apprenticeship to the
The powerful, art-loving Elector Palatine Johann
Netherlandish flower painter
Artistic Flower Arrangements Wilhelm in Diisseldorf recognized that Ruysch's Willem van Aelst.
As if being presented by a magician's hand, the end¬ 1695 Marries the portrait painter
bouquets, with their elegant magnificence, were
Juriaen Pool.
less variety of flower species in the artistically ideally suited to decorate the sumptuous rooms at 1701 Together with her husband,
arranged bouquet seem to float towards the viewer she becomes a member of the
court or his art cabinet, and in 1708 he appointed
Painters' Guild in The Hague.
out of a dark background. Accurate observation her his court artist. However, apart from two visits 1708 Appointed court artist to the
enabled the artist to record with consummate tech¬ Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm
to her patron, Ruysch never left Amsterdam. She
in Diisseldorf.
nical skill the precise appearance of each single continued to paint even in old age, dying at the 1750 Dies 21 August in Amsterdam.
petal. At the same time, the conscious artifice of the venerable age of 86.
FURTHER READING:
entire arrangement is not concealed. Ruysch usually M.H. Grant, Rachel Ruysch, 1664-1750,
skillfully plays off apparent contrasts against each F. Lewis, Leigh-on-Sea (UK), 1956

other: cultivated flowers are placed beside wild

ones, cold and warm colors jostle, and light and dark
are subtly shaded. Dense and loosely packed areas
of the picture are arranged round an asymmetrical
vertical axis in such a way that they achieve a
marked spatial three-dimensionality.
Flower and fruit still-lifes corresponded perfectly to
the demands of the time for a heightening and refin¬
left page:
ing of nature through art. Of course, the traditional
Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers
idea of the vanitas (a still-life whose theme is the in an Urn on a Stone Ledge, c. 1745, oil on
canvas, 108 x 84 cm. National Museum
brevity of life) is also there in the background, hint¬
of Women in the Arts, Washington DC
ing at the transience of beauty. This is evident in the
above:
different stages of the plants: buds that are just
Godfried Schalcken, Portrait of Rachel
opening, fully opened flowers, and wilting leaves. Ruysch
40 | 41

Rose with Beetle and Bee, 1741,

oil on canvas on panel, 20 x 24.5 cm,
Kunstmuseum Basel
\ Ip ip I m
>V.% |R H ■■

mWM.
42 | 43 ROSALBA CARRIERA

JAN VERMEER GIULIA LAMA

1685 b. George Frederick 1707 Union of England and

Handel, German Scotland to form
composer Great Britain

1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780

1640 1645 1650 1655 1660 1665 1670 1675 1680 1685 1690 1695 1700
 1776 American Declaration of Independence
1769 James Watt invents
the steam engine 1777 Jeanne Fran^oise Julie Adelaide
1724 Completion of Belvedere Palace in Vienna Recamier, adversary of Napoleon
1772 James Cook
discovers the 1781 Start of the American War
Antarctic of Independence
1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 17S0-1790
1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1790-1840

..11111111...'inn...mi.mu.hum.. I' HI 11" H I UN ' " 111 'll

1790 1795 1800

ROSALBA CARRIERA
Almost everyone veho went to Venice on the Grand Tour wanted his or her portrait done by the brilliant “queen
of pastelsWithout the example of Rosalba Carriera’s pioneering pastels in the genre, the work of Quentin de
la Tour andJean-Etienne Liotard would have been inconceivable.

She was no beauty, Italian painter Rosalba Carriera. 150 of her pastels, some in a special Rosalba Room.
In fact she was a Plain Jane, quite the opposite of With orders of this magnitude, it is not surprising
the charming creatures she painted a thousand that such a successful painter should need a number
times in dry, powdery colors, light and scented, of assistants.
with an unprecedented virtuosity of technique.
The medium was not new—Leonardo da Vinci had Paris and Watteau
already used it for quick sketches centuries earlier. In 1715, Carriera made the acquaintance of the
French king's banker and treasurer, Pierre Crozat.
Powdery Pastel, Practical Format The encounter reaped her huge successes in France
In the playful, coquettish era of the Rococo, clients when, five years later, he invited her to Paris,
just loved Camera's masterly but delicate depictions installed her in a large suite in his town house, and
of elegance—ladies in glossy silk robes and a froth introduced her to the Paris art scene and the court.
of lace, with flowers in soft, flowing hair, and pearls However, as far as her artistic development was
against delicate skin. Yet her portraits of her clients concerned, the most important encounter was the
were not overdone. She always managed to capture 1675 Born 7 October in Venice.
one with Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), the
Her father has her taught
something of the sitter's individuality, with realism admired master of the fete galante, who was by then languages and music.
and, in her later work, with a perceptible sense of 1689 Takes painting lessons from
a dying man. They had long conversations about
Giuseppe Diamantini (1621-1705).
looking behind the physiognomy. A good example the use of color and how to make the most of 1700 Wins a reputation as a painter of
is her self-portrait of 1731, when she was 56, where miniatures and pastels, both
surface appeal. Shortly before his death, she did a
among Venetians and tourists.
she paints herself for once as an allegorical figure, portrait of him. Europe's aristocrats commission
tellingly as Winter, in a fur cap and white fur collar. portraits from her.
1705 Honorary member of the
Being a shrewd businesswoman, Carriera exploited Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
1706 Prince William of the Palatinate
the Venetian tourist market highly effectively. Her
invites her to his court in
pastels filled a gap in the market, as "souvenirs." Dusseldorf, and for years com¬
They could be easily packed into a traveler's bag¬ missions pictures from her.
1720 Becomes honorary member of the
gage, or sent by post in serial consignments as a Academie Royale de la Peinture
"gallery of beauty"—generally as a memory of a in Paris and the Accademia
Clementina in Bologna.
prince's visit to the city. 1720-1721 At the invitation of banker
and collector Pierre Crozat, she
makes a successful visit to Paris.
Good Business in La Serenissima 1746 Her sight begins to fail so
suddenly that she has to live in
As a city of festivals and masked balls, Venice was
"darkest, blackest night." In 1751,
full of travelers looking for adventure, art collectors, she becomes completely blind.
1757 Mentally deranged, she dies
and dealers from all over Europe. Not only Venetian
15 April in Venice.
painters such as Antonio Pellegrini and Tiepolo had
FURTHER READING:
full order books, Carriera did too. Her clientele
Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda
included, among many others, illustrious figures such Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art /
as Elector Maximilian of Bavaria and Danish king left page;
Knopf, New York, 1976
The Air (from the series: The Four Elements), 1746, pastel on paper,
Frederick IV. In 1739, Elector Frederick Augustus II Delia Gaze (ed.). Dictionary of Women
56 x 46 cm, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
of Saxony (later the King of Poland) bought Rosalba's
Chicago, 1997
above:
entire output of paintings. Thanks to him, the
Self-Portrait as Winter,
1731, pastel on paper, 46.5 x 34 cm,
Dresden's Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister now has over Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
44 | 45 GIULIA LAMA

JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU

1685 b. George Frederick Handel, 1703 Building of Buckingham

German composer Palace in London
commences

1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780

1640 1645 1650 1655 1660 1665 1670 1675 1680 1685 1690 1695 1700

Judith and Holofernes, c. 1730,

oil on canvas, 107 x 155 cm.
Galleria delLAccademia, Venice
 THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
1749
715 Dorothea Christiane Eixleben becomes
first German woman doctor
1700-1780 ROCOCO
... II l i ■U|llllllllllllllillllmllillml11.mill..
GIULIA LAMA
It was a long time before art history rediscovered the Venetian painter Giulia Lama. After her death, she
was quickly forgotten and her works were, ironically, attributed to the very same artists with whom she had
compered all her life.
"I have discovered here a woman who paints better
than Rosalba [Carriera] when it is a matter of large-
scale compositions. I was impressed by one of her
small works, but at the moment she is working on a
large-format painting. The subject of the painting is
the Rape of Europa ... The group is full of poetry
because this woman is as brilliant a poet as she is a
painter, and I find in her poems the same qualities
as in the works of Petrarch. Her name is Giulia
Lama/'’ This hymn of praise can be found in a letter
that Abbot Luigi Conti wrote to a certain Madame
de Caylus on l March 1728. Conti’s lines are one of
the few records to tell us anything about the life
and works of Giulia Lama. According to the abbot’s
description, Lama—born in Venice in 1681—was an
all-round genius who not only demonstrated great
artistic ability but who was also a talented poet and
studied mathematics under "famous Pater Maffei.
She also does embroidery and has spent much time
thinking about the invention of a machine which will
produce lace mechanically.”
Baroque Drama
We may know little about Giulia Lama, but one thing
is clear: her works do not correspond with the gos¬
samer late Baroque and the pastel color schemes of
the age in which she lived. Instead, her paintings are
dominated by contrasts of light and shade that are
full of tension. She shared this predilection with her
contemporary Giambattista Piazetta, with whom—
written sources inform us—she was permitted to
work. Whether the two artists were linked by a
teacher-student relationship, or whether they
worked together as colleagues, is uncertain. Conti’s
letter again makes it clear that Lama’s position was
not an easy one: "The artists make life very difficult
for the poor woman, but her talent triumphs over
her opponents. She is intelligent but ugly; and yet
she speaks in a charming manner, choosing her
words carefully, so that it is easy to forgive her looks
... But she lives a very retiring life.”
b. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer 1769 James Watt invents the steam engine
1756 b. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1776 American Declaration of Independence
Austrian composer 1789 SUrt of French Revo|ution
1760 Canada becomes a British colony
CLASSICISM 1750-1790
1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1790-1840
11 | 11 | | | | 11 M | | | | | | ... 1,111 . Ml .Mil I M I I I M I II I 1 I I 1 I 1 I I I 1 I 1 I 1 I I I 1 I I I I I I 1 I I 1 1
1785 1790 1795 1800
Giulia Lama's most famous painting hangs today in
the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice. It shows a
scene from the biblical story of Judith and
Holofernes. Lama did not take as her subject the
beheading of Holofernes by the Jewish widow
Judith, or Judith with the head of the general after
the assassination—both subjects were frequently
selected by artists—but rather the moment before
the killing. Holofernes’ body is presented to the
X <?•'».
A
Via
viewer asleep, but already twisted into an unnatural ; J
position. The dramatic lighting, which recalls the
flickering of a candle, contributes to the gloomy
atmosphere. Judith turns one last time to God in
prayer before she grasps the sword, visible in the
1681 Born i October in Venice, the
semi-darkness, and beheads the sleeping man.
daughter of painter Agostino
Lama.
1747 Dies 7 October in Venice.
No definite documentary evidence for
her biography survives.
FURTHER READING:
Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda
Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art /
Knopf, New York, 1976
Delia Gaze (ed.), Dictionary of Women
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
Chicago, 1997
above:
Giambattista Piazzetta, Portrait of
Giulia Lama, 1715-1720, oil on canvas,
69.4 x 55.5 cm, Thyssen-Bornemisza
Collection, Madrid
46 | 47 ANNA DOROTHEA THERBUSCH

WILLIAM HOGARTH

1703 Building of Buckingham Palace in London commences 1756 b. Wolfgang Amadeus

1707 Union of England and Scotland to form Great Britain Mozart, Austrian
composer
1697 b. Friederike Caroline Neuber, one of
the founders of German theater

1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM

1600-1700 BAROQUE ROCOCO 1700-1780

in 11111 n in ....... m 11 m i ..........I.. ..linn................. ii ii

1670 1675 1680 1685 1690 1695 1700 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 17: 1740 1745 1750 1755

1776/77,
Self-Portraitj
oil on canvas, 151 x 115 cm,
Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
 JOHN CONSTABLE
1776 American Declaration of Independence
17G0 Canada becomes a British colony
1769 James Watt invents the steam engine
1770 b. Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer
1750-1790 CLASSICISM
... LUlili
ANNA DOROTHEA THERBUSCH
Anna Dorothea Therbusch had both the talent and the courage to break with convention. Her career as a
painter was extraordinary for her day—she received commissions from leading families, and was among the
few female members of the academies in Stuttgart, Bologna, Paris, and Vienna.
The seventh child of Prussian court painter Georg
Lisiewski, Anna Dorothea started out with the great
advantage of being born into an artistic family. At a
time when society ladies were encouraged to
indulge in a little painting as a hobby, she was given
a thorough training by her father. As he was a por¬
trait painter, his daughter was more or less bound to
be the same, portraiture being, moreover, along
with still-lifes and miniatures, deemed the most
suitable genres for women. History painting, which
was more highly ranked, was ruled out in her case,
for women were forbidden to do nude studies,
though even that prohibition she ignored in the end.
Domestic Duties
After her marriage to Berlin innkeeper Ernst
Friedrich Therbusch, she devoted herself to running
their household; only a few paintings are known
from the early years of her marriage. Part of the
problem, it appears, was a strict mother-in-law,
whose view was that women were there "to bring
children into the world and look after domestic
matters," as her first biographer Johann Georg
Meusel dryly comments. "After her mother-in-law
died, however, she had more freedom to follow her
inclinations, as her husband was a man of sound
sense and realized it would be difficult to suppress
gifts of that sort." However, during the almost 20
years she had devoted to bringing up her children,
Therbusch had never lost touch with current
developments in art. When she was 40, her reduced
family obligations finally allowed her to take up an
artistic career.
A Late Start
She launched her professional career, which would
rapidly take her far beyond the borders of the
German principalities, by setting off for Stuttgart.
There she gained commissions from the Wurttemberg
court and was admitted to the academy. After two
successful years she moved on to Mannheim, where
1789 start of French Revolution
1789 George Washington becomes first President of the United States
ROMANTICISM 1790-1840
1790-1840 ROMANTICISM
L J IliiLLLLLl .. Illllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
1830 1835 1840 1845
she soon became painter to the Palatine court. Her
subsequent stay in Paris was the crowning step of
her career. She was admitted to the most famous
academy of the 18th century, the Academie Royale de
Peinture et Sculpture, an astonishing achievement
for a woman who was not only relatively unknown
in France but was also a foreigner. The writer Denis
Diderot commented on the artist's passion and
"ardent enthusiasm for her profession," and noted
that she was "intrepidly" doing nudes as well.
After her return to Berlin, Anna Dorothea Therbusch
established herself as the top society portraitist in
Berlin, working for the Prussian court and the
Russian tsarina's court.
1721 Born Anna Dorothea Lisiewski in
Twelve self-portraits of the artist have come down
Berlin 23 July, the seventh child of
to us. In them, she regards the viewer with cool portrait painter Georg Lisiewski.
1742 Marries Ernst Friedrich Therbusch.
self-assurance, handsome and proud, displaying
1761 Travels to Stuttgart, and works
single-mindedness and calm self-possession. She for Duke Carl Eugen of
Wurttemberg.
painted her Weimar self-portrait when she was
1762 Becomes honorary member of
sharing a studio with her brother, Christian Friedrich the Stuttgart Academy of Arts
(8 March); then a member of the
Reinhold Lisiewski. It shows her at the window,
Academy in Bologna.
with her brother painting in the background. Shortly 1764 Appointed court painter to the
court of Elector Palatine Karl
before her death, she did one of the most famous of
Theodor. Returns to Berlin.
artist self-portraits, in which she gazes at us discon¬ 1765-1768 Lives in Paris, making the
acquaintance of writer and
certingly through a large monocle. Books, globe,
philosopher Denis Diderot.
and brush leave no doubt as to the breadth of her Admitted to the Academie Royale
de Peinture et Sculpture.
education. It is a very public statement by an
1767 Exhibits at the Salon in Paris.
acknowledged artist. 1768 Admitted to the Academy of Fine
Arts in Vienna.
1769 Returns to Berlin.
1772 Her husband dies.
1773 She and her brother Christian are
commissioned by Russian Tsarina
Catherine II to do seven life-size
portraits.
1782 Dies 9 November in Berlin.
FURTHER READING:
Katharina Kiister and Beatrice Scherzer,
Der freie Blick. Anna Dorothea Ther¬
busch und Ludovike Simanowitz, exhibi¬
tion catalogue, Stadtisches Museum
Ludwigsburg, Heidelberg, 2002
Self-Portrait, c. 1773-1779, oil on canvas,
146,5 x n6 cm, Kunstsammlungen,
Weimar
 ANGELICA KAUFFMANN

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

1756 b. Wolfgang
Amadeus
Mozart, Austrian 1?75 b Jane Austetlj
composer English writer

1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790

ROCOCO 1700-1780

1705 1710

Between Music and

Self-Portrait Torn
Painting, 1792,
oil on canvas, 151 x 212 cm,
Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
 1787 Don Giovanni (Mozart) 1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
r76 American
Declaration of 1789 Start of French 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte becomes 1826 First photograph
Independence Revolution Emperor of France
1830 Railroad between Liverpool and Manchester completed
1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1790-1840
1790-1840 ROMANTICISM

llllllllllllll
.. ......ill 1111111111 I III I I .....
1780 3 IS 1790 1795 180 LULL
1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865

ANGELICA KAUFFMANN
Angelica Kauffmann had the polite world of Europe at her feet. She turned out a huge number of portraits
and history paintings in a style strongly influenced by both neo-classicism and fashionable sensibility.

Born in Chur (Switzerland) in 1741, Angelica self-sacrifice. As the only woman practicing in this
Kauffmann (or Kauffman) was considered an artistic genre, she featured among the founding members of
child prodigy even as a young girl. Her father, por¬ the Royal Academy in 1768. By then, she was already
trait and fresco painter Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a member of similar academies in Bologna, Florence,
provided her with an unusually broad training for a and Rome, and later Venice joined the list.
girl, in Como and Milan. She was fluent in four for¬ In 1781, Kauffmann married Venetian veduta painter
eign languages and was famous for her singing. As Antonio Zucchi, and returned with him to Rome,
she later depicted dramatically in her painting Self- where she acquired painter Anton Raphael Mengs'
Portrait Torn Between Music and Painting (1792), she studio. Here she was a great favorite with visiting
was long undecided whether to pursue a career in intellectuals such as Goethe and Herder and painted
music or in painting. portraits of numerous court figures.
Even in her lifetime and among early historians of
Study Tours in Italy art, Kauffmann’s works were considered to be the
In 1758, she and her father set off for Italy to study quintessence of "female art," the painter herself a
the works of old masters. The early influence of symbol of femininity. Particularly in Weimar circles, 1741 Born 30 October in Chur,
Switzerland, and spends her
Italian art on her work remained evident even in her she was stylized into a schone Seele (beautiful soul) childhood in Morbegno in the
late oeuvre, but leading figures of early neo-classi¬ and a model of sensibility, which gave her uncommon Valtellina Valley, Italy. She is
taught the basics of painting by
cism such as Winckelmann, Scottish painter Gavin cachet. In Rome in 1786, Goethe wrote: "It is very her father, Johann Joseph
Hamilton, Austrian "Roman" painter Anton von Kauffmann.
1757 Her mother dies, and she moves
Maron, and Italian artists Pompeo Battoni and with her father to Schwarzenberg
Piranesi also left their mark. In 1762, Kauffmann in Bregenzerwald (Vorarlberg),
Austria.
settled in Rome, where she found a considerable 1758 She and her father set off for
clientele among distinguished travelers visiting Italy. Italy.
1762 Arrives in Rome.
Many of these were Englishmen on the Grand Tour, 1766 Settles in London.
and her much-praised portrait of actor David Garrick 1768 Becomes a founding member of
the Royal Academy in London.
(1764) gained her a reputation in England. 1781 Marries Antonio Zucchi (second
marriage), returns to Rome.
1807 Dies 5 November in Rome.
"The whole world is Angelica-mad"
(Danish ambassador in 1781) FURTHER READING:
Wendy Wassyng Roworth (ed.) and
Finally, in 1766 she moved to London for 15 years, her others, Angelica Kauffman: A Con¬
career being greatly assisted by the celebrated Sir tinental Artist in Georgian England,
Reaktion Books, London, 1992
Joshua Reynolds. There she led a lively social life in Angela Rosenthal, Angelica Kauffman:
her salon with her aristocratic contacts and earned Art and Sensibility, Yale University
Press, London and New Haven, 2006
a handsome living with her paintings. Apart from
portraits, her great interest was history painting, the
highest academic genre, nominally the preserve of
left:
men. She made an astute selection of subjects in Portrait of Giovanni Volpato, 1795, oil on

spotlighting favorite heroines of classical history canvas, 62.5 x 51.2 cm. Private collection

such as Lucretia, Iphigenia, Virginia, and Penelope. above:

Self-Portrait with Drawing Pencil and
These all represented admired female virtues
1784, oil on canvas,
Folder, 64.8 x 50.7 cm,
such as fidelity, patience, selflessness, pity, and Neue Pinakothek, Munich
pleasant to look at pictures with Angelica because
her eye is well trained and her mechanical know¬
ledge of art is very great. At the same time she is
very sensitive to all that is beautiful, true and
delicate, and yet incredibly modest. ... She has an
incredible and—for a woman—huge talent.”
Kauffmann herself was shrewd enough to act up to
this ideal of femininity. Her inexhaustible industry,
her skill in choosing subject matter suited to her
market, and countless engravings and reproductions
of her works enhanced her popularity to such an
extent that the style of a whole period is still associ¬
ated with her name.

Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, 1785,

oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127 cm, Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
 ADELAIDE LABILLE-GUIARD
52 | 53
FRANCISCO DE GOYA ««
WILLIAM TURNER

1776 American Declaration

1755 b. Marie-Antoinette, of Independence
Queen of France and
1770 b. Ludwig van Beethoven,
Navarre
German composer

1750-1790 CLASSICISM
1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790
ROCOCO 1700-1780

jj_|_|_|_|j_|_[ ................. M11111 M 1111111111111111 I. I. I I

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1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785
1700 1705 1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 1735

Portrait of Louise-Elisabeth of France,

Duchess of Parma, and Her Son Ferdinand,
1788, oil on canvas, 113 x 88.5 cm, Musee
National du Chateau et des Trianons,
Versailles
 1789 Start of French 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte
Revolution becomes Emperor of France
1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1815
(Mary Wollstonecraft)
ROMANTICISM 1790-1840
MINI
^ ^11111111J11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.......... ii 11111 n m 1111111 m 11 m 111 m 111 m 11 ...
1790 179S 1800 1805 1810 1815
ADELAIDE LABILLE-GUIARD
She never achieved the fame of her rival, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, who was six years her junior, and yet she
earned for herself a firm place in the history of art: above all, Adelaide Labille-Guiard was an indefatigable
fighter for the recognition of women artists.
Born in 1749 in Paris, Adelaide took lessons as a young
girl from the miniature painter Frangois-Elie Vincent,
who was a close friend of her father, Claude-Edme
Labille. Later she studied pastel drawing under
Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, and then eventually
transferred to Frangois-Andre Vincent, the son of her
first teacher, who introduced her to the secrets of oil
painting. She soon established a reputation as a
talented portrait painter and was commissioned to
paint ministers, fellow artists, and members of the
royal family. Her career took a major step forward
when she was accepted into the Academie Royale in
Paris, which at that time included only two women as
members. The works submitted by Labille-Guiard
convinced the Academie of her skill, as did those
presented by her contemporary, Elisabeth Vigee-
Lebrun, who was admitted on the same day: the
date, 31 May 1783, has been recorded. The Academie
reacted immediately to this rapid increase in the
number of women members by limiting to four the
number of places available for female artists.
A Glittering Career
A series of triumphs followed in the Paris Salon,
where the paintings she exhibited were received
with favorable comments. Among her most famous
works is a self-portrait from the year 1785, which
shows Labille-Guiard sitting in front of her easel.
Behind her stand two of her pupils, Marie Gabrielle
Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond.
From her early years as an artist, Labille-Guiard
regarded the teaching of other women artists as one
of her most important duties. She married the tax
official Nicolas Guiard when she was 20, but the
marriage remained childless, so that she was able to
devote all her energies to her own painting and the
training of her pupils. In the early 1790s, Labille-
Guiard was the first woman artist to be permitted
to set up a studio for herself and her pupils in the
Louvre building complex; she was long refused
because, it was claimed, the presence of women
1826 b. Marie Goegg-Pouchoulin, first campaigner
for women's rights in Switzerland
Napoleon defeated at Waterloo 1848 Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels)
1790-1840 ROMANTICISM
IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910
1820 !825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1
855 1860 1865 1870 1875
artists would corrupt the morals of the artists
already working there.
Although Labille-Guiard painted numerous members
of the royal family and was even appointed "Painter
of the Princesses of France," a position which entitled
her to a royal pension, she became an avowed sup¬
porter of the French Revolution. Her previous royal
connections did not prove to be disadvantageous:
the country's new rulers, including Maximilien de
Robespierre, let her paint their portraits.
As she grew older, Labille-Guiard withdrew increas¬
ingly from the public eye. She enjoyed a period of
happiness late in life when she married her former
teacher, Frangois-Andre Vincent, once the separa¬
tion from her husband, which had taken place many 1749 Born n April in Paris
Studies with Fran^ois-Elie
years before, finally became legal. She died three Vincent, Maurice-Quentin de
years later, on 24 April 1803, in Paris. La Tour, and Frangois-Andre
Vincent.
1769 Marries Nicolas Guiard.
1783 Admitted to the Academie Royale.
1800 Second marriage, to Frangois-
Andre Vincent.
1803 Dies 24 April in Paris.
FURTHER READING:
Delia Gaze (ed.), Dictionary of Women
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
Chicago, 1997
Frances Borzello, Seeing Ourselves:
Women's Self-Portraits, Thames and
Hudson, London, 1998
Salon
The Salon, an exhibition of works by living artists,
was initiated during the late 17th century by the
French court, and took place regularly. A jury,
consisting on occasion exclusively of members of
the Academie Royale, determined which artists
would be admitted and which works would be
displayed. For an artist to be recognized, it was
essential that he or she should have exhibited in
the Salon. From the mid-igth century, as a protest
against the conservative selection procedures of
the official Salon, counter-exhibitions were held
including the Salon des Refuses (Salon of the Self-Portrait with Two of Her Pupils,
Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle
Refused) and the Salon des Independants (Salon Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785, oil on
of the Independents). canvas, 210 x 151 cm, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
54 | 5S ELISABETH VIGEE-LEBRUN

FRANCISCO DE GOYA hmmh

ANGELIKA KAUFMANN

1789 Start of French

1731 b. Sophie La Roche, German poetess
Julie (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) Revolution

1724 b. Immanuel Kant, German philosopher

17S0-1790 CLASSICISM
1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790

.Illlllll I
1755 1785
1745 1750
 1797 b. Franz Schubert, Austrian composer
1859 Second Italian War of Independence
1789 George Washington becomes (Giuseppe Garibaldi)
first President of the USA 1814 Fidelio (Ludwig van Beethoven)
1862 The House of the Dead
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Emperor of France (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
ROMANTICISM 1790-1840
1790-1840 ROMANTICISM
IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

lji 11111111111 .111 n 1.......................him.mi

1800 1805 1810 ISIS 1820 182S 1830
..in..
183S 1840
II III 1111II
184S 1850
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1865
III
1870 1875 1880

ELISABETH VIGEE-LEBRUN
Forced into exile for many years following the French Revolution, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun was a portrait
painter in the neo-classical style who was famous for her beauty. She pursued a glittering career in the salons
of the inter national aristocracy between Paris and Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London.

As in the case of Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth The Portrait Painter of "Sensibility"

Vigee's artistic talent was discovered at a very early Vigee-LebrurTs portraits of women reveal her
age. She was instructed initially by her father, the predilection for the simple, natural elegance of the
painter Louis Vigee, and she soon attracted attention new reformed fashion, which rejected the stiff and
with her portraits of members of the aristocracy. Her artificial attitudes of court etiquette. This corres¬
paintings reflected the elegance and lifestyle of the ponded with the current concept of "sensibility,"
nobility at the end of the i8th century. a "back to Nature" mood, that was propagated at
Two years after her marriage to the artist and art the time by the influential writer Jean-Jacques
dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, she was eventu¬ Rousseau. In her famous self-portrait, Vigee-Lebrun
ally summoned to Versailles to paint the portrait of represents herself as a loving and caring mother
Queen Marie-Antoinette. The latter was so delighted embracing her daughter.
that Vigee-Lebrun became her favorite artist, and Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun produced a total of more
she produced more than 20 portraits of the Queen than 600 portraits, which represent a considerable
of France and her children. This friendship opened to proportion of her total oeuvre of 800 paintings.
her the doors of the Academie Royale, where she Unusually for a woman of her time, she self-confid- 1755 Born Marie-Elisabeth-Louise
Vigee 16 April in Paris, the
successfully exhibited her works. ently published her memoirs in three volumes in daughter of the painter Louis
Vigee.
1835. Despite their nostalgic tone, the Souvenirs, as
Takes her first painting lessons,
European Exile she called them, provide an interesting insight into from her father.
As a result of her close relationship with the aristo¬ the political and artistic events of the time. 1776 Marries the painter and art dealer
Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun.
cracy, at the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1783 Accepted by the Academie Royale
1789 she was forced to flee, initially to Italy. She had in Paris.
1789 Leaves Paris after the outbreak of
no idea that she would spend the next 12 years in the Revolution and flees to Italy.
exile, returning to Paris only in 1802. Her confident 1794 Divorced from Jean-Baptiste-
Pierre Lebrun.
manner in the presence of the nobility, her diligence, 1795 Works in St. Petersburg, where
and her skills secured for Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun not she spends the next six years.
1802 Returns to Paris, but leaves for
only fame and numerous commissions from the London shortly afterwards.
courts of Europe, but also five honorary memberships 1835 Publishes Souvenirs.
Neo-Classicism
1842 Dies 30 March in Paris.
in the academies concerned. She spent six years in The painters of the late 18th century, especially
St. Petersburg, where she was patronized by the the French artists Jacques-Louis David and his FURTHER READING:
The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun,
family of the Czarina Catherine II. The numerous pupil Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, produced translated by Sian Evans, Camden
portraits that she was commissioned to paint per¬ in their works a determined reaction to the play¬ Press, London, 1989
Mary D. Sheriff, The Exceptional
mitted her to acquire a considerable fortune fulness and opulence of the Baroque and Rococo Woman: Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the
eras, styles with which the aristocracy had University of
Cultural Politics of Art,
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1996
demonstrated their love of pomp and which had
fallen out of favor since the French Revolution.
left page:
Painting was now dominated by the simple forms Portrait of Countess Golovin, c.1800,
of Greek and Roman antiquity, and by a clear and oil on canvas, 84 x 67 cm, The Barber
Institute of Fine Arts, University of
unadorned approach to both line and color. Apart Birmingham, UK
from David and Ingres, famous painters of the
above:
neo-classical period include Joseph Anton Koch, Self-Portrait, 1800,
oil on canvas,
Angelica Kauffmann, and Raffael Mengs. 78.5 x 68 cm, Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg
56 | 57

mISe.

above:
Portrait of Margherita Portorati, 1792,
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

right page:
Self-Portrait with Daughter,1786,
oil on panel, 105 x 85 cm, Musee du
Louvre, Paris
Mfiamim
 58 | 59 MARGUERITE GERARD

J. M. W. TURNER

JACQUES LOUIS DAVID

1785 b. Bettina von Arnim,

1761 Julie (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) German poetess and
1729 b. Catherine II (the Great),
campaigner for female
Empress of Russia
emancipation

1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790 1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM

him......... i .mi .......ilium...urn.

1710 1715 1720 1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795
 1879 b. Albert Einstein
1801 The Nude Maja (Francisco de Goya) 1848 Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx, 1884 Robert Koch
Friedrich Engels) identifies
1809 b. Charles Darwin, English natural scientist
1863 Civil rights for blacks cholera
1800 Establishment of the United Kingdom of bacterium
in the United States
Great Britain and Ireland
1790-1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

..1.mum.... ....hum.nun. " i1' 'll i" .. i .

1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885

MARGUERITE GERARD
A talent for art often runs in families, even if only by marriage. Marguerite Gerard certainly profited
greatly from her brother-in-law Jean-Honore Fragonard, who took her under his wing in her early years.

Born in 1761 in Grasse in southern France as the Making Music

daughter of the perfumer Claude Gerard, Marguerite
Gerard moved to Paris at the age of 14, where she
lived in the family of her sister Marie-Anne. The latter
was married to no less a person than Jean-Honore
Fragonard, one of the masters of French Rococo.
Fragonard, famous for his light-hearted, charming,
and frequently risque pastoral and bathing scenes,
taught the young Marguerite initially drawing and
etching, and later instructed her in the art of oil
painting.
Gerard took as her model not only the art of her
famous brother-in-law, but also studied the works
of Dutch painters such as Gabriel Metsu and Gerard
ter Borch, who had achieved considerable interna¬
tional fame during the 17th century. Like them, Gerard
developed a taste for intimate domestic genre
scenes, which she recorded with an eye for detail
and a particular talent for the portrayal of different
surfaces and fabrics on canvas. Even during her life¬
time, she enjoyed great success: from the 1790s she
was able to exhibit her works in the Paris Salon and
received commissions from wealthy patrons. She
seems, however, to have shown scant respect for
conventions: she never married and was apparently
decidedly lacking in ambition when it was a matter
of becoming a member of the venerable Academie
Royale.
One of the most frequent motifs in Gerard's works
is of women making music, as in the painting com¬
pleted around 1810 entitled Prelude to a Concert. In
Gerard's time, it was customary for wealthy families
to ensure that their daughters received an education
in the various arts. However, this genre painting
can also be interpreted in a variety of ways: thus it
appears as if there is more between the seated
woman and the man standing behind her than the
title and setting of the scene would seem to indi¬
cate. Details like the little dog at the bottom left, a
popular symbol of faithfulness, and the cat sitting
on the table, which can be seen as a symbol of
1761 Born 28 January in Grasse, France.
promiscuity, provide sufficient room for ambiva¬
1775 Moves to Paris to live with her
lence. sister Marie-Anne and brother-in-
law Jean-Honore Fragonard,
whose pupil she becomes.
1799 First exhibits at the Salon in
Paris.
1837 Dies 18 May in Paris.
FURTHER READING:
Sally Wells-Robertson, Marguerite
Gerard: 1761-1837, thesis, New York
University, 1978
Delia Gaze (ed.), Dictionary of Women
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
Chicago, 1997

Genre Painting
Genre painting is dedicated to depicting scenes of
everyday life. Frequently, chosen subjects include
groups of people celebrating together or domestic
interiors, often presented in a way that allows for
left page:
a moral significance to be read. Genre painting
Prelude to a Concert, c. 1810, oil on
experienced a high point in 17th-century Dutch canvas, 56.5 x 47.6 cm. National Museum
art, where masterpieces by artists such as Gerard of Women in the Arts, Washington DC

ter Borch and Jan Vermeer of Delft left a lasting above:

impression on the form. Francois Dumont, Portrait of Marguerite
Gerard, 1793, Wallace Collection, London
 60 | 61 CONSTANCE MAYER

FRANCISCO DE GOYA

J. M.W. TURNER

1789 Start of French 1793 The Death of Marat

Revolution (Jacques-Louis David)

1776 American Declaration 1791 Construction of Branden- 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte

of Independence burg Gate in Berlin becomes Emperor of Fra

1700-1780 ROCOCO CLASSICISM 1750-1790 1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1790-1840

1725 1730 1735 1740 1745 1750 1755 1760 1765 1770 1775 1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810

The Dream of Happiness,1819, oil on

canvas, 97 x 146 cm, Musee du Louvre,
Paris
Battle of Trafalgar 1830 b. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach,

1815 Napoleon defeated at Austrian-Moravian poet 1848 Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx, 1877 Queen Victoria becomes
Waterloo Friedrich Engels) Empress of India

1790 1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

^lllllllllllillllllllllimilllllllllllllmi|iiiimiiiiii[...mm.... 11111 n .......

815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 184S 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 18

CONSTANCE MAYER
The name of French painter Constance Majer is closely linked with that of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, whose
pupil and lover she was. Many of her pictures, especially genre scenes and portraits, were sold under this
name, and even today a correct attribution is often difficult.

Constance Mayer was born in Paris in 1775, the Dream of Happiness

daughter of a customs official. She was taught by
the leading genre painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and
for a brief time even worked in the studio of the
celebrated Jacques-Louis David, though his heroic
manner was not to her taste. It was quite different
with Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, whom she met in 1802.
Although she was by then in her late 20s, had fin¬
ished her training and had already had works
exhibited at the Salon in Paris since 1796, she was
keen to go on studying with him. The teacher-pupil
relationship soon developed into a love affair.
Constance Mayer was besotted, and in 1810 moved
to the Sorbonne in Paris, where a studio apartment
had been made available to Prud'hon, so as to be
nearer to him. Seventeen years his junior, Mayer
became his closest collaborator, partner, and lover.
When Prud'hon's wife had a nervous breakdown in
1803 and was shut away in a closed institution,
Constance Mayer looked after the couple's children,
ran Prud'hon's household, and supported him finan¬
cially.
It is not easy to distinguish her work from that of her
former teacher. Often they worked together on a
painting, Prud'hon doing sketches and Mayer doing
the painting from them. This procedure was not at
all uncommon at the time, but in this case led to
Constance Mayer as a painter disappearing behind
the figure of her paragon.
Her picture The Dream of Happiness of 1819 was
likewise the result of this collaboration, Prud'hon
having done the sketches here, too. Lit by the light
of the moon in a boat gliding smoothly over the
water, a young woman rests on the arm of her hus¬
band, with a sleeping child at her breast. A female
figure, Fortuna, assisted by Cupid, rows the boat.
Exhibited at the Salon in 1819, the picture had an
accompanying text: "Love and happiness navigate
a boat over the river of life. A young man sits at
the stern, holding his wife and sleeping child in his
arms."
Possibly this allegorical scene contained some of
1775 Born in Paris.
Constance Mayer's own dreams and longings. Her
Studies with Greuze, and briefly
artistic output and devotion to Prud'hon brought her collaborates with Jacques-Louis
David.
no fulfillment, and led to severe depression and panic.
1796 Exhibits at the Paris Salon for the
Worse, after the death of his wife Prud'hon refused first time.
1802 Meets Pierre-Paul Prud'hon,
to marry her. On 26 May 1821, she committed suicide
whose pupil (and later lover) she
in her studio, cutting her own throat. Shaken by her becomes.
1821 Kills herself 26 May in Paris.
death, Prud'hon completed her last works and the
following year put on a retrospective of her work at FURTHER READING:
Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda
the Salon.
Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art /
Knopf, New York, 1976
Delia Gaze (ed.), Dictionary of Women
Artists, Fitzroy Dearborn, London and
Chicago, 1997

Self-Portrait,undated, oil on canvas,

Bibliotheque Marmottan, Boulogne-
Billancourt, Paris
62 | 63 ROSA BONHEUR

GUSTAVE COURBET

EDOUARD MANET

1837 Victoria becomes Queen of England

1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
1842 China cedes Hong
1824 Start of restoration and trans¬ Kong to the British
formation of Windsor Castle
1850 b. Sofia Kovalevskaya, first
female mathematics profess
1750-1790 CLASSICISM ROMANTICISM 1790-1840 1790-1840 ROMANTICISM

left:
Study for The Horse Market, 1853-1855, oil
on canvas, 28 x 6i cm, Private collection

below:
Sheep by the Sea,1865, oil on panel,
32.4 x 45.7 cm, National Museum of
Women in the Arts, Washington DC
 1861-1865 American Civil War
1883 First skyscraper in Chicago
1883 Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910
1 I I I III
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
ROSA BONHEUR
Even as a young girl, Rosa Bonheur drew in the parks, horse market, and abattoirs of Paris. Her studio
at 56 Rue de I’Ouest, a sensational menagerie, attracted countless visitors. She is considered the most famous
animal painter of the 19th century.
Rosa Bonheur was very fortunate in her parents.
They allowed the little tomboy with short-cropped
hair and trousers to roam freely round the Bordeaux
countryside. Though artistically gifted, Rosa had
problems with reading, so she was allowed to paint
an animal for every letter of the alphabet as a visual
aid, even on the walls of her nursery. Rosa's father,
a drawing master, sent her to a boys' school with
her brothers, and finally taught her himself.
Living Unconventionally
This freedom of action would determine her whole
life. She would not let herself be constrained by
corsets, either literally or metaphorically, not even
in post-i829 Paris. Granted official permission, she
went around where necessary in comfortable, practical
male attire to do her studies of animat anatomy. As
a teenager copying in the Louvre or later in her mid-
20s in her own studio, she was always on the ball,
very much to the benefit of her press reputation. No
one interfered, since she was valued as an artist who
could do sensationally authentic portraits of animals.
Her early work features complicated compositions
and skillfully choreographed movements, while the
later works are sublime and entirely appropriate
to the species. Even when she shared a household
with Nathalie Micas from her mid-3os or in her later
years with young American painter Anna Klumpke,
it did not make the headlines. Instead, a critic wrote
after the Salon of 1847: "Mademoiselle Rosa paints
almost like a man."
International Fame at a Gallop
It was a gripping, animated composition of monu¬
mental dimensions—over 244 by 507 cm (8 by r6
feet)—that caught an enraptured public's eye in
Paris in 1853. Critics were as enthusiastic. The Horse
Fair shows a crowd of splendid black horses and
mettlesome grays careering past our eyes full of
mischief and churning up dust, the stable boys try¬
ing to control some of them by the bridle. Dramatic
1888 Sunflowers (Vincent van Gogh)
1900 The Interpretation of Dreams (Sigmund Freud)
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920
.11111 III 11111111111111.. 11111111111111
111 111111
clouds in the background reinforce the intense
coloration and light effects to produce a tense
atmosphere.
A Dealer's Stroke of Genius
Thanks to dealer Ernst Gambart, Rosa Bonheur's
reputation extended well beyond France. He bought
the monumental work for 40,000 francs, together
with reproduction rights, with a brilliant marketing
concept in mind. He had The Horse Fair duplicated as
an engraving, and, after Queen Victoria had given it
her blessing at a private viewing in Windsor Castle in
1855, put his prize possession on show in London.
The 33-year-old artist became famous overnight, even
in America. To crown his campaign, he auctioned
the painting to a collector, on the remarkable condi¬
tion that he allow the work to be shown for three
years in a touring exhibition!
Lions in Country House
Bonheur brought back not just sketches from her
promotional tours with Gambart. Living or stuffed,
cows and eagles, a horse, sheep, and a number of
smaller creatures shared Bonheur's studio. Mobbed
by fans, the now financially successful Bonheur
could afford a country retreat, Chateau By on the
edge of the forest of Fontainebleau. Two lionesses
were also in residence, one of them as tame as a
lamb—a gift from Gambart. As Bonheur grew older,
painting bison became a favorite subject.
EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940
1
111 1111111111[11111111111111II III 11 m 1111111111
1822 Born 16 March in Bordeaux, the
eldest of four children.
1829 Her family moves to Paris.
1835 Her father, landscape painter
Raymond Bonheur, teachers his
children after the death of his
wife. Bonheur copies works of
Poussin and Paulus Potter at the
Louvre in Paris.
1841 Exhibits at the Salon in Paris for
the first time (two paintings).
1845 To study animals at close hand,
she lives on a farm for some
months.
1848 Awarded her first medal, for Oxen
of the Cantal.
1853 Wins an international reputation
overnight with The Horse Fair.
She buys Chateau By, and lives
there with Nathalie Micas.
1865 Awarded the Cross of the Legion
d'Honneur.
1899 Dies 25 May in Chateau By.
FURTHER READING:
Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur,
Theodore Stanton (ed.), Hacker Art
Books, New York, 1976
Dore Ashton, Rosa Bonheur: A Life and
a Legend, The Viking Press, New York,
1981
Robyn Montana Turner, Rosa Bonheur,
Little, Brown, Boston, 1991
Rosa Bonheur, c. 1865
 64 | 65 BERTHE MORISOT

EDOUARD MANET

VINCENT VAN GOGH

1826 First photograph

1871 German troops
1837 Victoria becomes Queen of England capture Paris

1790-1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

ROMANTICISM 1790-1840

II I II I I I I III II I I I I I I I II
1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875

Reading, 1873, oil on canvas,

45.1 x 72.4 cm, The Cleveland Museum
of Art, Donated by the Hanna Fund
 1911 Marie Curie awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
1887-1889 Construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
1888 Sunflowers (Vincent van Gogh) 1914-1918 World War I

1905 Foundation of the artists' association 1927 Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic
"Die Briicke''
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONIS CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960
I I 11
lli I I I II 11 I II I ill 1 111 I I I I I I I 111 I I I I I I I 111 I I I I I I I 111 I I I I I I I 111 I I I I I I I 111 I I I I I I I 111 I I I I I I I 111 I III I I I 111 | | | ..I I I I 1 I I I 111 I I I I M 1111 [ I I I I I I 111 1111.Ilium.
1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

BERTHE MORISOT
French painter Berthe Morisot was the first woman to exhibit with the Impressionists. Her first biographer,
Armand Fourreau, wrote of her: “Her life was like an enclosed lake, never churned up bj storms, calm, linear,
and at one with her work.”

Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges in 1841, the third but nonetheless was savaged by critics. Her former
child of a government official's four children. The teacher even said she should apologize to Correggio
father moved posts several times, and in 1852 the for trying to do something in oil that could only be
family resettled in Paris. There, Berthe and her done in watercolors. Berthe Morisot refused to be
sisters Yves and Edma had their first drawing les¬ put off. By the end of the 1870s she had found her
sons. However, the sisters soon found the academic own voice, producing oil paintings of great trans¬
art teaching they got from Geoffroy-Alphonse parency and refinement. Her first solo show in 1892
Chocarne inadequate. Yves gave up painting, but was a great success.
Berthe and Edma asked for a new teacher, and Berthe Morisot died of pneumonia in Paris on 2 March
Joseph Guichard was the man they got. Under his 1895.
guidance, they copied old masters in the Louvre. The
distinguished landscape painter Camille Corot lent
them some of his works to copy, and in summer 1861
they painted at his country house in Villa d'Avray,
which was an opportunity for doing a lot of plein-air 1841 Born 14 January in Bourges, the
third of four children.
painting. In 1867 came a decisive encounter, when 1852 The family moves to Paris, where
she met Edouard Manet. She soon formed part of his Berthe has drawing and painting
lessons.
circle, which included Pissarro, Degas, Cezanne, 1864 Exhibits at the Salon for the first
Sisley, Monet, and Renoir. The Morisot and Manet time.
1867 Meets Manet, and then Pissaro,
families were also in close contact, so that Berthe Degas, Cezanne, Monet, and
gained permission to sit for Manet. This artistic co¬ Renoir.
1874 Marries Manet's brother, Eugene.
operation went on for several years, and the friend¬ 1878 Daughter Julie born.
ship was not shaken by the rough handling that art 1892 First solo show at the Galerie
Boussod et Valadon.
critics gave Manet's 1873 portrait of her, Le Repos. 1895 Dies 2 March in Paris.
Manet had promised Berthe that she would not be
FURTHER READING:
recognizable in the picture, but she was. The critics Kathleen Adler and Tamar Garb, Berthe
panned the picture as immoral, even calling Berthe Morisot, Phaidon, London, 1995
Margaret Shennan, Berthe Morisot.
a "queen of slovenliness" for the way she sat. The First Lady of Impressionism, Sutton,
Throup, Stoud, Gloucestershire (UK),
1996
Admiration and Criticism Impressionism Russell T. Clement, Annick Houze, and
Manet remained a key reference point, even so. Under Impressionism got its name from Claude Monet's Christiane Erbolato-Ramsey (eds.),
Women Impressionists: A Sourcebook,
his influence, Berthe turned to new subject matter, picture Impression, Sunrise (1872), a dawn scene of Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 2000
painting everyday scenes and portraits. In 1874, she the port of Le Havre. Critic Louis Leroy used the
had nine paintings in the first Impressionist exhibition, term to denigrate all the Impressionist painters
and after that showed at every Impressionist exhibi¬ showing at the 1874 exhibition, and the term stuck.
tion until 1886, except in 1879. The same year, she The Impressionists preferred to paint in the open
(en plein air) to capture different effects of light
married Manet's brother, Eugene. One painting she
and atmosphere, applying paint straight to canvas
showed at the first Impressionist exhibition was her
with rapid brushstrokes. Leading representatives
oil painting Reading, showing a woman in a white
of the style beside Monet include Renoir, Degas,
dress reading in a landscape. The picture was also
Manet, Pissaro, and Sisley.
admired for the lightness in the handling of color, Berthe Morisot, undated
66 | 67

Woman at Her Toilette, c. 1875, oil on

canvas, 60.3 x 80.4 cm, The Art Institute
of Chicago
 MARY CASSATT
68 | 69

CLAUDE MONET

GEORGES SEURAT

1857 Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)

1830 b. Emily Dickinson,
1871 German troops
American poet
capture Paris

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910
ROMANTICISM 1790-1840 1790-1840 ROMANTICISM

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
11......111 111111111 111111111 1 111 11111 11111 M 11 111111111 11 M 11111 111111 M 1 1111 111 11.Ill 1 1111111II 111111111 1111111111 M I M 1111111111II111111111111111
JIM
1795 1800

The Boating Party, c. 1893/94, oil on

canvas, 90 x 117 cm. The National Gallery
of Art, Washington DC
 1905 Foundation of the artists' association
"Die Briicke"

1887-1889 Construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris I9i4-i9i8 World War I

1897-1899 Water L/l/es (Claude Monet) 1920 Women awarded voting rights in the United States
1921 Albert Einstein awarded Nobel Prize
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM iQ7n iQ/tn
t^KUSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960
POP ART 1960-1975

^‘l‘'llllm-l-milim .Illllllllllllllllllllllllllllllimill...mi.
1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 197

MARY CASSATT
American painter Mary Cassatt joined the Impressionist group of artists in Paris. As a graphic artist
she did exquisite drypoints, and is considered one of the most important American artists of her time.

In 1861, Mary Cassatt studied at the Academy of Fine means of flat, clearly delineated shapes and delicate
Arts in Philadelphia, continuing her studies in Paris coloration. In particular, she did a series of ten color
four years later. After numerous study trips to Rome, drypoint prints (now known as The Ten) produced in
Parma, Madrid, and Antwerp, where she studied old a highly elaborate technique. They are elegant, and
masters with great discipline, she finally settled in unmistakably her work. The series was an important
Paris in 1874. There her work was soon accepted for component of her very important solo exhibition at
exhibition at the Salon, but at the personal request Durand-Ruel in 1893.
of Edgar Degas, with whom she had become firm
friends, she switched to the new salon put on by the The Mother and Child Theme
"Independants," later known as the Impressionists: Around the same time, and perhaps influenced
"I was delighted to accept... I rejected conventional by differences of opinion over the Dreyfus Affair in
art. I began to live." 1894, Cassatt and Degas broke off their friendship.
The stylistic influences of Degas are unmistakable in Cassatt turned to a subject that other contemporary
Cassatt's paintings, which is hardly surprising since female artists had also taken up—the life of middle-
he followed her artistic development almost as a class women, often mother and child—and painted 1845 Born 22 May in Allegheny, near
Pittsburgh.
teacher. Cassatt loved scenes set in the glittering many pictures on the subject. 1861 Becomes a student at the
world of theater and opera lit by artificial light. The Mary Cassatt had to stop painting in 1915, when her Academy of Fine Arts in
Philadelphia, continuing her
response in the press to the 12 works she exhibited sight began to fail. studies after 1865 in Paris, from
in the 1879 Impressionists exhibition was consider¬ where she makes numerous study
tours around Europe.
able. Not only oils such as Wo man in a Loge were
1874 Settles in Paris.
praised, but also the pastel pictures, where pastels 1879 Takes part in Impressionist
exhibitions (till 1886).
were mixed with metallic oils to depict the brilliant
1894 Buys Chateau Beaufresne on the
atmosphere of nightlife. Her delight in experimenta¬ Oise.
1904 Admitted to the Legion
tion is evident. In the 1870s, Mary Cassatt also did d'Honneur.
much as a practical intermediary between the 1914 Awarded the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts' gold
Impressionists and the American public, particularly medal.
helping Degas and Monet to sell in the USA. 1915 Has to stop painting due to failing
eyesight.
1926 Dies 14 June in Mesnil-Theribus,
The Development of Color Drypoints France.

From 1880, Cassatt invested great energy in graphic FURTHER READING:

work. Fellow artists such as Degas, Edouard Manet, Gerhard Gruitrooy, Mary Cassatt:
An American Impressionist, Todtri,
and Camille Pissarro were also doing the same, and New York, 1996
all of them now experimented with various printing Georgette G. Gouveia, The Essential
Mary Cassatt, Harry N. Abrams,
techniques, in some cases amazing combinations of New York, 2001
etching, drypoint, aquatints, and other techniques. Griselda Pollock, Mary Cassatt,
Chaucer, London, 2005
However, the publication of her series for the journal
Lejour et La Nuit was never concluded.
Deeply impressed by the large-scale exhibition of
Japanese woodcuts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in
1890, Cassatt translated traditional Japanese print¬
ing techniques into contemporary French style by Mary Cassatt, undated
70 71 below:
The Bath, 1891, etching,
31.4 x 24.4 cm

right page:
Woman in a Loge, 1878/79,
oil on canvas, 80.2 x 58.2 cm,
Philadelphia Museum of Art
 EVA GONZALES
72 | 73

VINCENT VAN GOGH

WASSILY KANDINSKY

1871 German troops capture Paris

1826 First photograph

1830 b. Auguste Schmid, writer and joint founder 1886 First cars with internal
of the women's movement in Germany combustion engine

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910
1790-1840 ROMANTICISM

1830 1840 1850

Early Wakening, c. 1877/78, oil on canvas,

81.5 x too cm, Kunsthalle Bremen
 1888 Sunflowers (Vincent van Gogh) 1906 Finnish women are the first in Europe
to receive full voting rights
1905 Foundation of the artists' 1914-1918 World War I
association "Die Briicke"
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920
J'l-11111111 11111! 111 la-U-LLL 111... ..I...
1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915
EVA GONZALES
The Parisian artist Eva Gonzales died at the age of only
style to maturity. Although she was long overshadowed by Edouard Manet, who was greatly admired by many
young artists, her genre paintings and pastels were nonetheless highly regarded.
How difficult it must have been in the late 19th cen¬
tury for a woman with artistic ambition to step out
of the shadow of her teacher, all too often a famous
personality, and no longer to be seen merely as a
pupil, model, or mistress! Berthe Morisot and Mary
Cassatt, who were painting at the same time as Eva
Gonzales, had to fight against the same problems as
she did. As the daughter of the famous novelist
Emmanuel Gonzales and the musician Marie Celine
Ragut, she grew up at the heart of the Parisian intel¬
lectual and artistic scene. At the early age of 17 she
decided to devote herself to art, and from 1866
onwards she studied under the portraitist Charles
Chaplin. Energetic and confident, she set up her
own studio at the same time.
In the Shadow of Manet
Three years later she met the artist Edouard Manet,
a controversial figure at the time, whose painting
technique had a lasting effect on the Impressionists.
Gonzales became his only pupil and, like Berthe
Morisot, his model.
Eva Gonzales could not avoid becoming involved in
Manet's constant struggle for the recognition of his
art in the conservative Paris Salon. In 1870, after she
had been working for a year in Manet's studio, she
succeeded in having three of her paintings exhibited
1933 Adolf Hitler comes to power
1921 Albert Einstein awarded Nobel Prize
EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975
I III 11 ....I.I " 111 I I il IIIIII 111.HIM. Mil MM Hll
1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975
—too early for her to have developed her personal
in the all-powerful Salon. The works followed Manet's
style very closely, and, fatally, the latter exhibited at
the same time, of all things, his Portrait of Eva
Gonzales. The painting was sharply criticized; every¬
one was talking about the lovely model in Manet's
unsuccessful painting, but no one took her seriously
as an artist.
She continued to exhibit her works regularly in the
Salon and finally achieved recognition for a series of
large-format genre paintings for which her sister
Jeanne had acted as model. Some of her paintings
from the 1870s retain stylistic elements of
Impressionism, although she never belonged to
that group.
1849 Born 19 April in Paris, the
daughter of the writer Emmanuel
Airy Pastels and a Tragic Death Gonzales and the musician Marie
Celine Ragut.
She was highly successful above all with her pastels.
1866 Begins to study under the portrait
On the occasion of the retrospective two years after painter Charles Chaplin.
1869 Meets Edouard Manet, and
her death, the critic Philippe Burty enthusiastically
becomes his pupil and model.
claimed that he had never seen anything lighter and 1870 Exhibits at the Paris Salon for the
first time.
more delicate, nothing that was more typical of the
1879 Marries graphic artist Henri
characteristics of pastel painting, than the fine tones Guerard.
1883 Dies 5 May in Paris.
of the works of Eva Gonzales.
Eva Gonzales died unexpectedly in 1883 following the FURTHER READING:
Francois Mathey, Six Femmes Peintres:
birth of her son, five years after her marriage to the
Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalez,
graphic artist Henri Guerard, presumably of puerperal Seraphine Louis, Suzanne Valadon,
Maria Blanchard and Marie Laurenc,
fever. Her death acquired a special poignancy through
Les Editions du Chene, Paris, 1951
the fact that it occurred exactly five days after that Russell T. Clement, Annick Houze, and
Christiane Erbolato-Ramsey (eds.),
of her teacher, Edouard Manet.
Women Impressionists: A Sourcebook,
Although Gonzales' creative development was inter¬ Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 2000
rupted so suddenly, she is considered to be one of
the most important woman painters of the late 19th
century, alongside Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.
left:
A Loge in the Theatre Italien, c. 1874,
oil on canvas, 98 x 130 cm,
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
above:
Self-Portrait, c.1875, oil on canvas,
2i x 12.5 cm, Private collection
 74 | 75 CECILIA BEAUX

WASSILY KANDINSKY

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER

1813 b. Giuseppe Verdi, Italian composer 1855 Hiawatha (Longfellow) 1876 Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)

1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890
 1905 Bertha von Suttner awarded Nobel Peace Prize 1940 The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin) 1966 Indira Gandhi becomes
Prime Minister of India
1907 Hague Convention 1914-1918 World War I 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights before UN General Assembly
1906 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Pablo Picasso) 1933 Adolf Hitler comes to power

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACTER EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

mill ....mimniimm.....mini...Mini

CECILIA BEAUX
By the time she was JO, Cecilia Beaux was one of the leading portrait painters in America. The double portrait
of her sister and nephew inspired by Whistler and called Les Derniers Jours d’Enfance (188J) won the
Mary Smith Prize at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It was also accepted for the Paris Salon in 1887,
which sealed her reputation as an artist of international standing.

Cecilia Beaux was born in Philadelphia in 1855, the "Unsimple simplicity"

youngest daughter of Jean Adolphe Beaux, a silk Cecilia Beaux's interest in the human figure and
manufacturer originally from Provence, France, and expressions is particularly reflected in portraits she
teacher Cecilia Kent Leavitt. The sudden death of painted of less well-known people and their friends.
her mother 12 days after her birth hit her father so Among her outstanding works is Reverie, a portrait
hard that he left Cecilia and her three-year-old of her friend Caroline Kilby Smith. Beaux's favorite
sister with their grandmother and returned to sitters were beautiful women with dark hair and
France for two years. At i6, Cecilia had her first art dark eyes. Generally her sitters are shown in uncon¬
lessons from artist Catharine Ann Drinker, later ventional poses; in Reverie, the sitter looks absent
going on to the school run by the Dutch painter mindedly at the viewer, her face leaning against
Francis Adolf van der Wielen for a further two years. both hands, her elbows propped on the arms of her
chair. A critic described the work as an "odd work of
A Penchant for Portraits unsimple simplicity, with a nervous, almost loud
On finishing her studies at Van der Wielen's, she expression of the figure in its apparent tranquility."
1855 Born l May in Philadelphia.
began her career, as she was now in a position Fler empathetic portraits made Cecilia Beaux a Takes first art lessons at the age
to earn a living from art. She painted portraits of favorite portraitist for writers, politicians, and artists. of i6.
1877 Sporadically attends classes at
children, produced lithographs, painted pottery, and In 1924 she injured herself badly in an accident in the Pennsylvania Academy of the
gave lessons at Miss Sanford's School. Meantime Paris, which restricted her ability to work. She died Fine Arts.
1888 Studies at the Academie Julien
she sporadically attended portrait and costume at a venerable age in September 1942. and Academie Colarossi in Paris.
classes at the Pennsylvania Academia, but decided 1893 Admitted to the Society of
American Artists.
against the progressive artist Thomas Eakins as a 1895 Takes up teaching post at the
teacher. In 1888 she spent 18 months studying in Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts.
Paris at the academies Julian and Colarossi. The 1942 Dies 7 September in Gloucester,
same year, while working in Concarneau with Massachusetts.

American artists Alexander Flarrison and Charles FURTHER READING:

Lasar, she made a firm decision to become a por¬ Alice A. Carter, Cecilia Beaux: A Modern
Painter in the Victorian Age, Rizzoli,
traitist. In a letter to her uncle Will, she wrote: New York, 2005
"People seem to interest me more than anything in
the world, and that's the reason for my success."

left page:
Reverie, 1894, oil on canvas,
83.8 x 63.5 cm. The Butler Institute of
American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

above:
Cecilia Beaux in her Studio, c. 1890
 76 | 77 ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG FORBES

VINCENT VAN GOGH

PABLO PICASSO

1840 b. Peter Tchaikovsky, Russian composer 1871 German troops capture Paris

1879 Daisy Miller (Henry James)

1790-1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895

The Minuet,1892, oil on canvas,

124x 94 cm, Penlee House Gallery
and Museum, Penzance
 1906 Maria Montessori opens her first Children's House 1927 Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic
1914-1918 World War I 1937 "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich
1907 b. Grace Hopper, American computer pioneer and 1933 Adolf Hitler comes to power 1939-1945 World War II
first female Rear Admiral of the US Navy Reserve
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

IJiiiLiiiiiiiLlIJiW ....min.. i ii .....mum. i .mu.mini

1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985

ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG FORBES

The artists’ colony in Newlyn, on the southern coast of England, became the second home of the Canadian
artist Elizabeth Armstrong Forbes. Not only did she meet her future husband there, she also founded with
him a school offainting that propagated painting in the open air.

Elizabeth Adela Armstrong was born in 1859 in the was one of the founders of the school of painting,
province of Ontario, Canada, but she moved to and thus one of the driving forces in the artists'
Europe with her mother while still a child. After community with its ideal of plein-air art, it was con¬
several years in England, where she received her sidered unseemly for a woman to set up her easel
first artistic training at the South Kensington out in the open air. Thus Forbes surrounded herself
Schools, she returned to Canada. Soon after that with her models and painted sensitive pictures of
she settled in New York City, where she studied at the people in her vicinity.
the Art Students League. She was influenced above The "Queen of Newlyn," as she was called in her
all by her teacher William Merritt Chase, an obituary, was not only a passionate artist who
American Impressionist whose style influenced an exhibited more works during her lifetime than her
entire generation of artists. Chase had lived in husband, including at the Royal Academy and the
Europe for many years, mainly in Munich and Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. She also
Venice. Elizabeth Armstrong also decided to return published a periodical, The Paperchase, which became
to Europe. After a period of study in Chase's former the mouthpiece of the Newlyn artists. She wrote
1859 Born 29 December in Kingston,
stamping ground, Munich, she spent a year in Pont- poems, and her children's book King Arthur's Wood,
Ontario, Canada.
Aven in Brittany. The little community, which would with illustrations in the Pre-Raphaelite style, was Receives first artistic training at
the South Kensington Schools in
later attract such famous names as Paul Gauguin published in 1904. She dedicated it to her only son,
London, later at the Art Students
and Emile Bernard, inspired her to try her hand at Alec. Elizabeth Armstrong Forbes died in 1912 at the League in New York, where she
studies with William Merritt
the plein-air painting that was the preferred early age of 53.
Chase.
approach of the French Impressionists. 1883 Moves to London.
1885 Moves to Newlyn, Cornwall,
In 1883, Armstrong left Pont-Aven for London and
where she meets Stanhope
began to experiment with printing techniques. In Alexander Forbes.
1889 Marries Forbes.
the same year she was elected as a member of the
1904 Publishes her children's book
Society of Painter Etchers. However, it was not until King Arthur's Wood.
1912 Dies 22 March in Newlyn.
1885, when she moved to the picturesque fishing vil¬
lage of Newlyn in Cornwall, that she finally settled FURTHER READING:
Caroline Fox, Stanhope Forbes and the
down. Since the early 1880s, the little village had Newlyn School, David and Charles,
been a favorite destination of artists, who found the Newton Abbott, 1993
Deborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame:
fishermen's cottages and the daily lives of the rural Plein-air Painting
Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain
population provided attractive motifs. Another In plein-air painting, the artist does not work in a 1850-1300, Routledge, London and
New York, 2000
advantage was the light in the seaside town, which studio but paints outdoors, directly in front of the
made it ideal for painting in the open air. motif, surrounded by natural light. The artists of
It was in Newlyn that Elizabeth Armstrong met the the Barbizon School were early representatives of
painter Stanhope Alexander Forbes, who had also plein-air painting. Their name derives from the
village near Paris where Theodore Rousseau,
come to Newlyn to paint outdoors. The pair married
Camille Corot, Jean-Fran^ois Millet, and others
in 1889. Ten years iater, in 1899, they established the
gathered in order to spend the summer months
Newlyn Art School, whose aim was to encourage
preparing studies for landscape paintings in the
interest in open-air painting. Elizabeth Forbes her¬ Stanhope Forbes, Elizabeth Adela
Forest of Fontainebleau. The Fontainebleau
self concentrated above all in her search for motifs Armstrong Forbes, 1890, oil on canvas.
School is regarded as one of the precursors of Collection of Newlyn Art Gallery on loan
on the village inhabitants and devoted herself espe¬ to Penlee House Gallery and Museum,
Impressionism.
cially to the representation of children. Although she Penzance
78 | 79 PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER

VINCENT VAN GOGH

FRIDA KAHLO

1901 b. Marlene Dietrich

1887-1889 Construction of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

1790-1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910 1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM

111 I I II I
1830 1835

Self-Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding

Anniversary, 1906, oil on card,
101.5 x 70.2 cm, Paula Modersohn-Becker
Museum, Bremen
 1914-1918 World War I 1939-1945 World War II 1955 Beginnings of Pop Art
1927 Charles Lindbergh flies across the Atlantic 1969 US moon landing
1937 Guernica 1945 Atom bombs dropped on
(Pablo Picasso) Hiroshima and Nagasaki
CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

LJ- i.ii ... i" i" " " " 111111.111! 1111" ....in... ... .................
1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
Long before the Blauer Reiter or Brucke groups came into being, Paula Modersohn-Becker was already
considered highly avant-garde. Posthumously, she became the best-known artist of the Worpswede artists’
colony internationally, but during her life her work remained unappreciated.

Paula "hates the conventional and now is falling
into the trap of making everything angular, ugly,
bizarre and wooden instead. The color is wonder¬
ful—but the shapes? The expression? Hands like
spoons, noses like conks, mouths like wounds ..."
Even Paula's husband Otto failed to appreciate her,
as this diary entry for 1903 indicates. But Paula was
fascinated by "ugliness," and the wooden and the
bizarre made sense. Her notion of art, always with a
keen awareness of what the pioneers were doing in
Paris, had nothing in common with the initial inten¬
tions of the Worpswede artists' colony.
Art on the Moors
Around the turn of the 20th century, Worpswede
was a village at the back of beyond, inhabited by
Paris and Her Own Style
As she was able to confirm in Paris, she was not alone
in her search for the primeval and primitive. Cezanne's
landscapes, composed of simple shapes and strong
colors, together with the South Sea pictures of
Gauguin, left an indelible impression on her, not to
mention her studies at the Ecoles des Beaux-Arts.
Once back in Worpswede, Modersohn turned to
women, children, and nature for her subject matter,
rendering them as both coarse and beautiful, strong
and subtle. She applied paint thickly, treating it as
matter. She strove to capture a subject's essence,
painting forms that were rough and angular in large
flat areas delineated with bold outlines.
1876 Born 8 February in Dresden, the
A constant theme is woman and motherhood. In her
third of six children.
self-portraits, she shows herself pregnant, naked, 1892 Visits relatives in London and has

her first drawing lessons there.

peasants in a barren landscape of peat and bog. frontal, elemental, and courageous. Were these acts Starts a two-year teacher-train¬
But there artists could get on with painting, living of liberation? Certainly they were a declaration of ing course in Dresden, meantime
attending drawing classes given
simply, without being far from Bremen. It was a self-belief.
by painter Bernhard Wiegandt.
long way from academic pressures and prescribed Paula Modersohn-Becker’s career lasted only seven 1896 Studies at the Verein Berliner

Kiinstlerinnen (Society of Women

models, it was outside in the fresh air, and easel years. An early maturing artist unnoticed by her fel¬
Artists) art school.
and brush were what mattered. So painters Fritz low artists in Worpswede, she produced in that time 1897 Visits Worpswede for the first

time.
Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, and Heinrich Vogeler over 700 paintings and 1,000 drawings before dying
1898 Moves to Worpswede and has

set about getting nature down on to canvas, looking aged only 31, a few days after the birth of her longed- lessons with Fritz Mackensen.
Makes friends with Clara
in part for realism, in part for lyrical moods. for child. She is supposed to have said on her death¬
Westhoff, who soon marries poet
Paula, who joined the colony at the age of 22, was bed: "What a pity." Rainer Maria Rilke.
1900 Travels to Paris and enrolls for
something else. Her landscapes seemed banged on courses at the Ecole des Beaux
to the canvas, divided into small, hard-edged flat Arts. Marries Otto Modersohn.
1906 Decides to put the Worpswede
sections. The colors remained muted and earthy. idyll behind her for good.
"It's a strange feeling how all the colorful, studied 1907 Returns to Worpswede. Dies of an

embolism on 20 November, short¬

and affected elements ... fall away," she wrote ly after the birth of her daughter.
enthusiastically in 1899. As a graduate of the Verein
FURTHER READING:
der Berliner Kiinstlerinnen's art school, her purpose Gillian Perry, Paula Modersohn-Becker:
in going to Worpswede was to have supplementary Her Life and Work, Women's Press,
London,1979
lessons from Fritz Mackensen. They proved super¬ J. Diane Radycki (ed.), The Letters and
fluous, because she soon perfected her individual Journals of Paula Modersohn-Becker,
Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1980
style of plain renderings of people and landscapes
focusing on the essentials, an approach that met with
blank incomprehension among her fellow Worpswede
artists.
Paula Becker, c. 1895
80 I 81 below:
Avenue of Birches,1900, oil on card,
37 x 46.6 cm, Paula Modersohn-Becker
Stiftung, Bremen

right page:
Self-Portrait,1906, oil on card,
62.2 x 48.2 cm, Private collection
82 | 83 CAMILLE CLAUDEL

WASSILY KANDINSKY

PABLO PICASSO

1894 Completion of the

Reichstag in Berlin

1886 First cars with internal

combustion engine

1790-1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

III I i I I I I I 1II
1865 1870

Valse (The Waltz], 1891-1905, bronze,

height 25 cm, Neue Pinakothek,
1900 The Interpretation of 1908 b. Simone de Beauvoir, French writer
Dreams (Sigmund Freud) 1914_a918 World War I
1905 Foundation of the artists'
association "Die Briicke''
IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940
11111111111111111111..1111.......HI.1111111111..I....
CAMILLE CLAUDEL
Camille Claudel is widely considered the first important European woman sculptor. Her works in
plaster; bronze, and marble, plus various drawings and paintings, have ensured her an important place
in the history of art.
Camille Claudel was born in 1864 in the little French
town of Fere-en-Tardenois. In 1881, her family
moved to Paris to enable the gifted Camille to study
at the Academie Colarossi, one of the few private art
academies that also admitted female students. She
began her first portrait studies in a studio of young
women sculptors under the direction of Alfred
Boucher.
Encounter with Rodin
In 1893, Auguste Rodin took over responsibility for
teaching the group. At that point, Camille Claudel
was 19 years old, while Rodin was 43 and already a
successful artist. He discovered her talent, and
Claudel became his workshop partner, lover, and
muse. She sat for numerous portraits, one of the
best known being Rodin's Pensee. She also helped
him with his commissioned works, and modeled,
among other things, the celebrated hands of the
Burghers of Calais.
Claudel first exhibited her own works in 1885, and
caused a stir with her sculpture of Vieille Helene at
the Salon of the Societe des Artistes Fran^ais—
more than all other branches of art, the sculptors'
guild was considered a purely male domain. Her
greatest success was with the Valse group, done in
several versions: a couple dancing that expresses in
masterly fashion their absorption in the music.
A further masterpiece alludes to Claudel's real-life
situation: Age de la Maturite shows three nude figures,
and constitutes a symbol of the triangular relation¬
ship with Rodin, who did not want to leave his long¬
standing partner Roset Beuret. Claudel was also
accused of being artistically dependent on Rodin.
1939-1945 World War II i960 John F. Kennedy becomes 1983 Barbara McClintock
1933 Adolf Hitler comes to power President of the United States awarded Nobel Prize
for Medicine
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975
..limn..
The Struggle for Recognition
In 1898, Claudel left Rodin and fought for her artistic
and social independence. She retreated to her studio,
lived in utmost poverty and was overcome by a emo¬
tional crisis, which meant an undesirable scandal for
her family. She did her last sculpture in 1906, and in
the same year destroyed a large proportion of her
works, accusing Rodin of plagiarism. In 1913, just a
few days after the death of her father, who was the
only one in the family to back her, her diplomat
brother Paul Claudel, a major poet, had her incarcer¬
ated in a psychiatric clinic. Camille Claudel spent the
remaining 30 years of her life in institutions at Ville-
Evrard near Paris and at Montdevergues near Avignon.
1864 Born 8 December 1864 in Fere-en-
"Never forget that your sister languishes in prison.
Tardenois, France. At n, she
In prison with nothing but lunatics making faces the begins to work with clay.
1881 Becomes a student at the private
whole day and incapable of saying three sensible
art school, the Academie
words." The desperate letters to her brother trying Colarossi, in Paris.
Supported by sculptor Alfred
to obtain her release were ignored.
Boucher.
1883 Meets Auguste Rodin.
1892 Takes part in an exhibition at the
Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts.
1898 Claudel and Rodin break up for
good.
Moves into a studio on Quai
Bourbon on the Ile-St-Louis,
where she lives a secluded and
impoverished existence.
1913 After her father's death, her
brother Paul Claudel has her
committed to the Ville-Evrard
psychiatric institution near Paris.
1943 Dies in the Montdevergues
asylum near Avignon.
FURTHER READING:
Angelo Caranfa, Camille Claudel: A
Sculpture of Interior Solitude, Bucknell
University Press, Lewisburg, 1999
J.A. Schmoll / Eisenwerth, Rodin and
Camille Claudel, Prestel, Munich and
New York, 1999
Odile Ayral-Clause, Camille Claudel: A
Life, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2002
Cesar, Camille Claudel, 1884
 84 | 85 KATHE KOLLWITZ

PABLO PICASSO

GABRIELE MUNTER

1883 Also sprach Zarothustra (Nietzsche)

1790-1840 ROMANTICISM IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

.I.........I.1 " " 1'11" I " 111.HUH.'""I.“'I'.

1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900

Mother with Her Dead Childj 1903,

etching, 42.5 x 48.6 cm, Akademie

der Kiinste, Berlin

SlfeiisSssI
1311 Foundation of the artists' 1919 b. Evita Peron, First 1931 b. Sofia Gubaidulina, Russian composer
association "Der Blaue Reiter” Lady
auy of Argentina
mgcriuiid ,1937 fir» , Art”
"Degenerate A ... exhibition
. .. . . .
in Munich
1914-1918 World 1927 Charles Lindbergh flies 1937 Guernica (Pablo Picasso)
1961 Construction of the Berlin Wall
War I across the Atlantic 1939-1945 World War II
IMPRESSIONISM CUBISN1 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

.... 1...nil.. ........1 ill ...... in.II

1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990

KATHE KOLLWITZ
“I ™antt0 achieve something in this time, when people are at such a loss and need help” Kathe Kollwitz

In her 6o-year career, Kathe Kollwitz produced an flysheets and posters, such as the famous Nie Wieder
extensive output of prints and drawings, plus 20 Krieg (No More War).
sculptures that often took years to complete. Her
artistic work was combined with social and political In Times of War
commitment. She was born in Konigsberg (East When the Nazis came to power, Kollwitz was banned
Prussia) in 1867, and experienced two wars, social from exhibiting her works. When she signed the
wretchedness, and human suffering, which she Dringender Appell (Urgent Appeal) for the establish¬
reflected in her work. ment of a united workers' front against the Nazis,
she was forced to resign from the Prussian Academy
Responses to the Events of Her Time of Arts and sacked from her position as head of the
The great series of prints that assured her work an master class for print making. In 1944, at the invita¬
outstanding position in the development of 20th- tion of Prince Ernest Henry of Saxony, she moved
century printed graphics began with A Weavers' from Berlin to Moritzburg near Dresden, where she
Revolt (1893-1897). As the title indicates, she was died on 22 April 1945, a few days before the end of
attracted first of all to historical themes, in this case World War II. 1867 Born Kathe Schmidt 8 July in
Konigsberg, Germany (now
the weavers' revolt in Silesia, but later cycles such Kaliningrad, Russia).
1885 Becomes a student at the
as War (1921-1922) and Proletariat (1925) reflected
women's art school in Berlin.
current political and social developments. The litho¬ 1888 Studies painting in Munich.
1891 Marries physician Karl Kollwitz
graph Seed Grain Should not be Ground, a quote from
and moves to Berlin.
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, was her 1892 Son Hans born.

1896 Son Peter born.

last print, and developed from her interest in the
1904 Studies at the Academie Julien in
mother-and-child theme. Paris.
1907 Spends a year in Italy.
Kathe Kollwitz's style was always representational,
1914 Younger son Peter volunteers for
and stylistically independent of modernism. The the army and is killed in Flanders.
1919 Admitted to the Prussian
sculptures date from 1910 onwards, and were largely
Academy of Arts, Berlin.
inspired by the work of Ernst Barlach. Some years 1936 Banned from exhibiting.

1945 Dies 22 April in Moritzburg,

earlier, Kollwitz had spent two months in Paris to
Germany.
learn the basics of sculpture at the Academie Julian.
FURTHER READING:
The Father and Mother figures she worked at almost
Mina C. Klein and H. Arthur Klein,
without interruption for almost 20 years reflect her Kathe Kollwitz: A Life in Art, Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1972
personal grief after the death of her youngest son
Renate Hinz (ed.), Kathe Kollwitz:
Peter, who had been killed in the war in 1914 aged 18. Graphics, Posters, Drawings, Pantheon
Books, New York, 1981
The separate kneeling figures bear the features of the
Elizabeth Prelinger and others, Kathe
mourning parents, Karl and Kathe Kollwitz. A some¬ Kollwitz, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC / Yale University Press,
what larger version of the sculpture, Pieta, a seated
New Haven and London, 1992
mother with her dead son between her knees, has
been on display at the Neue Wache in Berlin since
1993, as an anti-war monument. Kollwitz's commit¬
left:
ment to peace and humanity, which she formulated Pieta, 1937-1938, enlarged re-casting
1993, Neue Wache, Berlin
in a clear, expressive style, is equally evident in the
execution of numerous commissioned works for above: Kathe Kollwitz, c. 1883
 86 | 87 GABRIELE MUNTER

PABLO PICASSO
JACKSON POLLOCK M

1861-1865 American Civil War 1891 End of the Indian Wars in the United States

1883 First skyscraper in Chicago

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910 1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM

llllllllllll
1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1900 1905 1910

Self-Portrait,c. 1909,
oil on canvas, 76.2 x 58.4 cm,
Private collection
 1914-1918 World War I
1939-1945
1919 Women in Germany awarded
voting rights
1923 b. Maria Callas, American-Greek opera singer
EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960
jilllillllillllliil'mlllllllllllllllllllillllllllltllllilllL[limim.....miiimii.in... n .........mi........................
1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
GABRIELE MtJNTER
Gabriele Munter was the pupil and lover of Wassily Kandinsky, and one of the principal forerunners of
Expressionism. The members of the artists’ group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider_) discussed pioneering
innovations on the corner bench of the house in Murnau in which Munter and Kandinsky lived.
The famous artists' love story began in 1902 with
painting expeditions. "Ella" was 25 when, free of the
restrictions of the Munich Academy, she and the
avant-garde Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky
traveled by rail and bicycle into the charming Alpine
foothills of Bavaria with Kandinsky's Phalanx paint¬
ing class, their rucksacks full of painting equipment.
Against panoramic views of the far horizon, they
studied the sunny meadows and grazing cows. The
new approach to art led Munter away from the accu¬
rate representation of reality towards simplification,
towards a pure expression of color, and towards
abstraction.
She wrote in 1908 about her time in Murnau: "While
I was there ... I made a huge leap forward—away
from copying nature, more or less in the Impressionist
manner..." In a diary entry from 1911 she noted that
her aim was not "to reproduce nature ... but to cap¬
ture its essence." Gabriele Munter took as her motifs
village streets and barns, mountains and wind, clouds
and graveyard crosses as well as still-lifes, interiors,
and portraits. She radically reduced both content
and expression to the essential, to the bare minimum,
surrounding her patches of color with black contours.
In her pictures, she consciously juxtaposed brilliant
colors that were far removed from those of nature.
The path to her progressively more abstract art led,
among other things, to her interest in folk customs,
and in particular the Bavarian tradition of reverse-
glass painting. She learned the technique from the
glass painter Heinrich Rambold, who worked in
Murnau at the time. Fascinated, she adopted for her
own work the interplay of powerful black contours
reminiscent of woodcuts, and the generous, brilliant
areas of color.
Yellow Cows and the "Russian House"
On 21 August 1909, Gabriele Munter used the money
she had inherited from her parents to purchase what
would become known as the celebrated "Munter-
haus." The locals scathingly referred to it as the
World War II 1963 Assassination of John F. Kennedy
1945 Atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1981 First flight by the Columbia
1950 End of racial segregation in the United States
space shuttle
1952 Elvis Presley rises to fame
POP ART 1960-1975
1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
"Russian House," the place where the artistic avant-
garde met informally. Today, authentically restored
and now a museum, it offers a poignant evocation of
that time.
They all stayed there: Franz Marc, August Macke,
Alexej von Jawlensky, and Marianne von Werefkin.
So did the composer Arnold Schonberg and mem¬
bers of the Neue Kiinstlervereinigung Miinchen
(New Artists' Association of Munich). There, the
artists deliberated on non-representational art
over glasses of beer, sometimes in the garden. The
artists, for their part, were misunderstood by the
art critics of the time, insulted as "incompetents"
who produced "grayish paint soup" because they
1877 Born 19 February in Berlin.
shocked the public with their images of yellow cows
1897 Receives her first painting lessons
painted with coarse brushstrokes. in Diisseldorf.
1901 Joins the Association of Women
Artists in Munich, then transfers
Miinter's Legacy: the Million-Dollar Collection to the Phalanx school run by
Wassily Kandinsky.
For many years Munter avoided the "Russian House";
1903-1915 She and Wassily Kandinsky
it was linked with too many memories. Her beloved live together as lovers.
1909 Purchases the "Russian House" in
Kandinsky, who at first wrote enthusiastic letters to
Murnau. Became a member of the
his talented "Ellacken," moved in 1914, on the out¬ New Artists' Association of
Munich.
break of World War I, first to Stockholm and then to
1911-1912 First exhibition of the
Moscow. Munter, his eternal fiancee, remained at Blauer Reiter.
1915-1920 Lives in Sweden. Returning
home alone and waited. In vain. For in the meantime,
to Germany, she commutes for
Kandinsky had married someone else. He never came years between Berlin, Elmau
Castle near Garmisch, Murnau,
back, and he never offered an explanation.
and Munich.
In the early 1930s art returned to the "Russian House," 1931 Makes Murnau her home.
1937 Her pictures are censored by the
together with Gabriele Munter; she remained there
Nazis.
until her death in 1962. It's a huge gain for art 1957 Awarded the Order of Merit of the
Federal Republic of Germany.
history that, at considerable personal risk, she
1962 Dies 19 May in Murnau.
preserved Kandinsky's paintings, which were perse¬
FURTHER READING:
cuted during the Nazi period as "degenerate art,"
Annegret Hoberg, Wassily Kandinsky
alongside her own works. and Gabriele Munter: Letters and
1902-1914, Prestel,
Reminiscences
On her 80th birthday, she left all her treasures to the
Munich and New York, 2005
Lenbachhaus, which was owned by the City of Munich:
reverse-glass paintings, tempera sheets and draw¬
ings, her own artifacts, more than 250 studies, more
than 90 oil paintings by Kandinsky, and all the works
by the Blauer Reiter artists in her possession.
Gabriele Munter, 1910
88 | 89
left page:
Boating, 1910, oil on canvas,
122.5 x 72.5 cm, Milwaukee Art Museum,
Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley

below:
Jawlensky and Werefkin, 1909, oil on card,
32.7 x 44.5 cm, Stadtische Galerie im
Lenbachhaus, Munich
 90 | 91 GEORGIA O'KEEFFE

PAUL KLEE

SALVADOR DALI

1882 b. Virginia Woolf, English writer 1914-1918 World

War I
1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910 1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920

......I.I.I.I. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I II I I I 1 I I I II I I II I I 1 I 1 1 1 I I I I I I I 11 I 11 I 1 I I 1 1 I I I I 1 1 I 1 1 1 M 1 I
1835 1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920

■v- -

Two Callas on Pink,1928, oil on

canvas, 102 x 76 cm, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Bequest of
Georgia O'Keeffe for the Alfred
Stieglitz Collection, 1987
 1939-1945 World War II i960 John F. Kennedy becomes 1981 First flight by the Columbia space shuttle
1925 The Great Gatsby 1945 Atom bombs dropped on President of the United States
(F. Scott Fitzgerald) Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1964 The United States enters the Vietnam War 1990 Reunification of Germany
1955 Beginnings of Pop Art 1969 US moon landing
EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

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1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
The Museum of Modern Art’s first exhibition of a 'woman artist (in 1946^) featured the work of Georgia
0’Keeffe- As an outsider in the development of 20th-century painting, she developed a style of her own that
fluctuates between the representational and the abstract.

Born in 1887, Georgia O'Keeffe grew up with six New Beginnings

siblings on a farm in Wisconsin. Her ambition was
to be a painter, and she went to famous art schools
such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art
Students League in New York.
Her breakthrough as an artist came when she joined
up with the avant-garde group of artists associated
with photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Shortly before,
she had destroyed a major part of her production to
date, aware that her painting was dominated by
alien influences. Stieglitz was enthusiastic about her
new style of abstract drawings in charcoal, and
without telling her organized a show at his Gallery
291, where he had also put on the first exhibition in
the USA of works by Picasso, Braque, and Matisse.
The Little Things of Life
O'Keeffe began in New York with clear, reduced
paintings of urban views and skyscrapers that
described the growth of the metropolis. In the 1930s,
In New Mexico, she created images of animal bones
and skulls set against desert landscapes, as well as
a series of paintings, drawings, and photographs of
the interior courtyards of her hacienda. As in most
of her pictures, her starting point was precise obser¬
vation of an object, which she used as a basis for
increasing abstraction. In her late work, she turned
once again to new subject matter: frequent trips
inspired her to do aerial scenes from planes. The last
great series, Sky above Clouds, dates from 1963-1965,
huge landscape formats pictures up to 7 meters
(23 feet) wide that show a certain affinity to the
works of postwar Abstract Expressionism. Georgia
1887 Born 15 November in Sun Prairie,
O'Keeffe died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1986. A
Wisconsin.
museum dedicated to her was opened there in 1997. 1903 Moves to Virginia.
1905 Becomes a student at the Art
Institute of Chicago, then
switches to the Art Students
League, New York. Subsequently
works as a commercial artist.
1917 First solo show at the gallery of

photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

flower motifs dominated, and these became her
1924 Marries Alfred Stieglitz.
best-known works—greatly magnified open calyces 1946 Alfred Stieglitz dies, and O'Keeffe

moves to New Mexico.

of orchids, lilies, or callas that often appeared to
1986 Dies 6 March in Santa Fe.
have erotic associations, though O'Keeffe herself
FURTHER READING:
rejected such interpretation. Her aim was to simplify
Katherine Hoffman, An Enduring Spirit:
form so as to bring out the essence of things. The Scarecrow
The Art of Georgia O'Keeffe,
Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1984
extreme close-up technique, filling the whole canvas
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Full Bloom:
with an image and making use of the opportunities The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe,
W.W. Norton, New York, 2004
of photographic optics, aimed to draw attention to
Kathleen Pyne, Modernism and the
these "wonders of the world." Feminine Voice: O'Keeffe and the Women
University of
of the Stieglitz Circle,
Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924, was inspired to
California Press, Berkeley, 2007
take countless nude and portrait photographs of
her, which gave her an image of a free-thinking,
emancipated woman. After the death of her much
older husband in 1946, O'Keeffe moved to New
Mexico, whose expansive, unspoiled landscape she
had already discovered on earlier trips looking for
new material. Her career, based on unconditional
self-determination greatly inspired feminist art and
art criticism in the 1970s and 1980s. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe,
Profile, 1932
 ^■ogpnSMfVPNMBBI

-Jm

mp1
IpiSP .

left page: above:

From the Lake, No. 3,1924, oil on canvas, Summer Days, 1936, oil on canvas,
91.4 x 76.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of 36 x 30 cm, Whitney Museum
Art, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe for the of American Art, New York,
Alfred Stieglitz Collection Gift of Calvin Klein
 94 | 95 HANNAH HOCH

PABLO PICASSO

PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER

1887-1889 Construction of the 1910 Manifesto of Futurism in Italy

Eiffel Tower in Paris 1914-1918 World War I
1905 b. Great Garbo, Swedish actress

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910 1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM

..I.11111111111'' 1111."II.I..1IH 11II.HI...11 HI 1111 i I

1840 1845 1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925
 1931 The Persistence of Memory
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime
(Salvador Dali)
Minister of the United Kingdom
1939-1945 World War II 1969 US moon landing 1986 Chernobyl disaster
1990 Reunification of Germany
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

..."hi
1930 1935 ]
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1985 1990 1995 2000
I Ii
2005 2010 2015

HANNAH HOCH
Hannah Hoch is famous above all for the photomontages she produced as a member of the circle of Berlin
Dadaists. Her oeuvre shows a continuous search for neve forms of expression and freedom of stjle.
“I have done everything and never bothered about signature and characteristics” Hannah Hoch

Hannah Hoch studied at the Stadtische Handwerks- After Dada

und Kunstgewerbeschule (Municipal College of
Applied Arts) in Berlin-Charlottenburg and later, after
an interruption caused by the outbreak of World War
I, at the Staatliche Lehranstalt des Kunstgewerbe-
museums (State College of the Museum of Applied
Arts) in Berlin.
"Dada triumphant!"
During her time as a student she met Raoul
Hausmann. When he later founded the Berlin Dada
movement in 1917, Hannah Hoch was the only woman
among the Dadaists: Richard HLilsenbeck, Johannes
Baader, George Grosz, John Heartfield, and Wieland
Herzfelde. Together with Hausmann, her companion,
lover, and colleague, she developed photomontage
as an independent art form. Hoch used this "new and
fantastic area for the creative man" to rebel against
the conventions of art and society, and to criticize in
ironic-sarcastic manner the political conditions of the
post-war era. Many works would outlive the action-
ism of the Dada group, such as Schnitt mit dem Kuchen-
messer DADA durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkultur-
epoche Deutschlands (Cut with the Kitchen Knife DADA
through Germany's Last Weimar Beer Belly Culture
Era), which was Hoch's contribution to the First
International Dada Fair in 1920 in Berlin. The critical
reflection of the social and socio-political situation
With the disintegration of Dada, and her separation
from Hausmann in the early 1920s, there followed
years of intensive cooperation with the international
avant-garde, including Theo and Nelly van
Doesburg, as well as Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl
group. Throughout her life, photomontage and col¬
lage remained important design elements for Hoch.
After the Nazis came to power, and she was banned
from exhibiting her works in Germany, she withdrew
to a little house in Heiligensee on the outskirts of
Berlin, where she was able to save many of her own
works and those of artist friends. After the end of
the war and long years of isolation, she was one of
the first to take an active part in the revival of art in 1889 Born Johanna Hoch i November in
Gotha, Germany.
Germany. In addition to collages and photomontages 1912 Moves to Berlin, and begins her
studies at the Berlin-
she also produced a large number of paintings dis¬
Charlottenburg College of
playing a wide range of drawing and stylistic features. Applied Arts.
1915 Continues her studies at the
In her late works, too, she also investigated new
Berlin College of the Museum of
artistic trends and integrated them, ironically alienat¬ Applied Arts. Meets Raoul
ed, into her work. The art of Hannah Hoch was only Hausmann.
1919 Takes part in the first Berlin Dada
rediscovered at a late stage in the re-assessment of Exhibition.
1920 Takes part in the first
Dada. In the 1970s, retrospectives in Berlin, Kyoto,
International Dada Fair.
Paris, and London acknowledged the artist's complete 1929 Spends three years in The Hague,
output. She died in 1978 in Berlin. Holland.
1938 Marries Kurt Matthies.
1978 Dies 31 May in Berlin.
FURTHER READING:

of women was a central theme of her work that she Maud Lavin, Cut with the Kitchen Knife:
The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah
referred to here with a map showing in which coun¬ Hoch,Yale University Press, New
tries women's suffrage had already been introduced. Haven, 1993
Louise R. Noun and others. Three
Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah
Hoch, Kathe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen,
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA,
1994-

left page:
Cut with the Kitchen Knife DADA through
Germany's Last Weimar Beer Belly
Culture Era, 1919-1920, Photomontage,
114 x 90 cm, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin

above:
Hannah Hoch, undated
 96 | 97 TAMARA DE LEMPICKA

PABLO PICASSO

SALVADOR DALI

1914-1918 World War I

1886 First cars with internal combustion engine 1919 Rosa Luxemburg assassinated
in Berlin

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910

II1111111II II
1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935

The Telephone II, 1930,

oil on wood, 35 x 27 cm.
Private collection
1932 b. Dian Fossey, American zoologist and i960 John F. Kennedy becomes President of the United States
behavioral scientist 1964 The United States enters the Vietnam War 1995 Christo and Jeanne-Claude
1939-1945 World War II 1969 Woodstock music festival wrap the Reichstag in Berlin

1945 Atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1981 First flight by Columbia space shuttle
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

illllllllllimillllllllllllllimill|||||||m||iiiiiiiiiiii[|iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinmiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiimiiiiiiii|||||| im II, Mil

'HI. JJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ
2005 2020 20;

TAMARA DE LEMPICKA
In painting, Art Deco was a stjle most eloquently expounded by a female artist—Tamara de Lempicka.
Her paintings captured the glamour and decadence of 1920s Paris with great verve.

Tamara de Lempicka was born Tamara Maria Gorska
in Warsaw in 1898. After the Russian Revolution, she
and her husband, Tadeusz Lempicki, emigrated from
St. Petersburg to Paris. There, she continued her art
studies with influential teachers such as Maurice
Denis at the Academie Ranson and at the studio of
the Cubist painter Andre Lhote.
A Cool Gaze
In the 1920s and 1930s, Lempicka was one of the most
sought-after painters of the day. She did nudes and
portraits of the American and European elite in a
style that made her both famous and commercially
successful. She exhibited in the major salons from
1923, and from the early 1930s American museums
started buying her work. Tamara de Lempicka put
herself across as a glamorous art celebrity, led a
smart life, and had numerous affairs with both men
emancipated woman. Yet for all the cool aloofness,
there is a muted but distinct sensuality and eroticism.
Even before World War II broke out, Tamara de
Lempicka and her second husband, Baron Raoul
Kuffner, emigrated to America and settled in Beverly
Hills. She took up new subject matter, trying her hand
at abstracts among other things, but she could not
recapture her earlier success. She spent her final years
in the little town of Cuernavaca in Mexico, where she
died in 1980.
1898 Born Tamara Maria Gorska
16 May in Warsaw, Poland.
1914 Moves to her aunt's in
St. Petersburg, Russia.
1916 Marries Tadeusz Lempicki.
1918 Flees to Paris following the

and women. A self-portrait from 1925 shows her at Russian Revolution. Takes
painting lessons.
the wheel of a Bugatti, with her sporting leather 1920 Daughter Kizette born.
1925 First solo exhibition in Milan,
gauntlets, a scarf casually draped around her neck,
establishes a reputation as a
a racing driver's helmet, scarlet lips, and an ice-cool portraitist of smart society.
gaze. 1928 Divorces Tadeusz Lempicki.
1933 Marries Baron Raoul Kuffner.

1939 Settles in the USA, but fails to

repeat her success as a painter.

Seductive Aloofness
1980 Dies 18 March in Cuernavaca,
Going beyond the official avant-garde, her pictures Mexico.
display neo-classical coloration and a manner that
FURTHER READING:
embraced the stylistic innovations of Cubism. She is Laura Claridge, Tamara de Lempicka:
A Life of Deco and Decadence,Clarkson
an excellent example of the Art Deco style that
Potter, New York, 1999
prevailed in Paris around 1925, following the famous Stefanie Penck, Tamara de Lempicka,
Prestel, Munich and London, 2004
international exhibition of Arts Decoratifs et Industriels
Modernes that year.
Among the portraits painted around the same time
is the one of the Duchesse de la Salle. As in most of
her pictures, the figure is clearly outlined, while the
background is rendered in abstract Cubist fashion.
The enamel-like gloss of her colors is very foiceful.
The full-length portrait of the Duchess (whose name
and title were made up) shows her in riding dress
and with a decidedly self-confident, indeed dominant
pose that Lempicka invented for the new image of Tamara de Lempicka, c. 1927
98 | 99 t.de UhpicKA.

right:
Portrait of the Duchess de la Salle,
1925, oil on canvas, 162 x 97 cm,
Private collection

right page:
Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green
BugattiJ,1929, oil on wood, 35 x 26 cm.
Private collection
 100|101 FRIDA KAHLO

PABLO PICASSO

JACKSON POLLOCK

1914-1918 World War I

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910
1918 b. Leonard Bernstein,
1906 b. Hannah Arendt,
American composer
German-American
1918 My Antonia (Willa Cather)
philosopher
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940

1 I I I I 1 I I I I II I I
1850 1855 1860 1865 1870 1875 1930 1935

The Two Fridas, 1939, Oil on canvas,

173,5 x 173 cm, Museo de Arte Moderno,
Mexico City
 1937 Guernica (Pablo Picasso) 1962 Cuba crisis 1986 Chernobyl disaster
1939-1945 World War II 1964 The United States enters 1990 Reunification of Germany
the Vietnam War
2001 g/n attacks on United States
AB5TRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

1111 1111iI M I 111111.11 11II I I I I I I 11II I I

..minium.. 111111111111.....mini...
1940 1945 1950 1955 I960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025

FRIDA KAHLO
“Iwas considered a Surrealist. That’s not right. I’ve never painted dreams. What I showed was my reality.”
Frida Kahlo

The transition from unknown Mexican artist to Frida that were hung on church walls. Andre Breton
Kahlo the cult figure began as much as anything out described her as a Surrealist, but it was a label she
of interest in her tragic life story. Born in Coyoacan, never accepted. It was, she stressed, not dreams but
a suburb of Mexico City, in 1907, she had a serious always her own reality that she painted. Her first
road accident when she was 18. During a collision successful solo show was in New York in 1938; the
between a school bus and a tram, an iron grab pole next was in Paris, where the Louvre bought a picture
pierced her pelvis. All her life she had to contend with in 1939. It was only in 1953 that she had a solo show
the consequences of her injuries, undergoing count¬ in her homeland, and she had to be taken to it in her
less operations and often being confined to bed for sick bed. In 1954 she caught pneumonia, from which
months. In 1929, she married Diego Rivera, one of the she never recovered, dying at the age of only 47.
best-known painters in post-revolutionary Mexico,
who was her great love. It was a difficult marriage,
during which they divorced and then remarried. Both
of them had extra-marital affairs, but they hit Frida
hard, particularly when Rivera had an affair with her 1907 Born 6 July in Coyoacan, near
Mexico City.
young sister. 1925 She is severely injured in a bus
accident, and spends the rest of
her life dominated by the effects
Life in Pictures of her injuries. She begins to
Originally, she had wanted to study medicine. She paint while in hospital.
1929 Marries painter Diego Rivera.
began to draw and paint while she was in hospital 1930 Accompanies Rivera on his
recovering from her accident. Her oeuvre consists of lengthy working trips to the USA.
1932 Hospitalized in Detroit after a
nearly 200 works, usually in small formats, a good miscarriage.
Meets Trotsky and has a brief
one-third of them being self-portraits. The Broken 1937

affair with him.

Column (1944) shows her in a steel corset with a 1939 Divorces and then remarries
spine in the form of a fractured column. Her tragic Rivera (1940) in San Francisco.
1953 First solo show of her works in
attempts to have children, despite her doctors' pro¬ Mexico City.
1954 Dies 13 July in Coyoacan.
hibition, became the subject of pictures such as the
oil painting of My Doll and I (1937) and the lithograph FURTHER READING:
Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of
of Frida and the Miscarriage (1932).
Frida Kahlo, Perennial, New York, 2002
Because of the graphic images of her physical and Carole Maso, Beauty is Convulsive: The
Passion of Frida Kahlo, Counterpoint,
mental suffering, Frida Kahlo is often seen as the
Washington, DC, 2002
pathetic and self-absorbed "Painter of Sorrows." Claudia Bauer, Frida Kahlo, Prestel,
Munich and New York, 2007
However, the pictures do have an element over and
above the personal suffering. They also constitute
allegorical depictions of gender roles and socio-polit¬
ical views. A Few Little Pricks (1935) shows a man who
has killed his unfaithful wife, firmly believing himself
to be in the right.
Her most productive source of inspiration was
Mexican folk art. For example, she cites religious
votive panels—small images painted on sheet zinc Nickolas Muray, Frida Kahlo, 1938/39
102|103 below: right page:
Frida and the Miscarriage or The Miscarriage, The Broken Column,1944, oil on canvas,
1932, lithograph, 32 x 23.5 cm, Museum mounted on fiberboard, 40 x 30.7 cm,
Dolores Olmedo Patino, Mexico City Museum Dolores Olmedo Patino, Mexico City
 104|105 LEE KRASNER

PABLO PICASSO

ANDY WARHOL

1929 Wall Street Crash

1914-1918 World War I in New York
1939-1945 World
1926 b. Ingeborg Bachmann, War II
Austrian writer

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910 1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940

1860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945

Birth,1956, oil on canvas,

209.6 x 121.9 cm, Private collection

Abstract Expressionism
During World War II, many American artists
were looking for a new approach to painting.
They wanted to create paintings as images not
of the real world but of an expressive and
autonomous world of their own. The forerun¬
ners of this kind of thinking were the European
Expressionists, principally Wassily Kandinsky,
who was the first to take the road to abstrac¬
tion. The chief representatives of Abstract
Expressionism were Jackson Pollock, Willem de
Kooning, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell.
 1980 Ronald Reagan becomes President
1961 Construction of the Berlin Wall of the United States 2003 The United States invades Iraq
1972 Munich massacre (attack on Israeli 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi awarded
team at the Olympic Games) Nobel Peace Prize
1973 First oil crisis 1990 Reunification of Germany
RACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

! 1111111111H1111M111H11H1111H11111111111 m 111111111 m ii 111111 ii 111 .......... m 1111111 m ............ m 11 .. mini .

LEE KRASNER
Lee Krasner was one of the most important representatives of Abstract Expressionism in New York.
But while her colleagues established their own individual stjle, Krasner never stopped repositioning her work.

Lena Krassner was bom in 1908 in the New York dis¬
trict of Brooklyn as the daughter of Orthodox Jewish
parents from Odessa. She later changed her given
name to Lee Krasner. Between 1926 and 1933 she
studied in New York, at the Washington Irvine High
School, the Women's Art School at the Cooper Union,
at the New York City College, and elsewhere. During
her work as a mural painting assistant in the Federal
Art Project between 1935 and 1943—a government
program designed to support unemployed artists—
she attended another course at the School of Fine
Arts under the artist Hans Hofmann, who intro¬
duced her to the international avant-garde and
abstract art.
The Legend of the "Action Widow"
From 1941, Krasner regularly participated in exhibitions
by the Association of American Abstract Artists. In
the same year she met the up-and-coming artist
Jackson Pollock, whom she married four years later.
During their marriage, she neglected her own artistic
work, though she never regarded herself as inferior or
she painted several layers of paint on top of each
other, in 1951 Krasner created her own principle for
the amalgamation of collage and painting. She cut up
works which she had previously created and used
parts of them for her new works.
In 1956, Jackson Pollock was killed in an automobile
accident. During the same year, Krasner began her
first large-format painting, Birth, in the series Earth
Green, in which she takes as her subject the forces of
nature. These pictures appear to be almost the exact
opposite of her more controlled, small-format Little
Image series of 1946 to 1949. After her mother's death
in 1959, and an operation on an aneurysm on her
cerebral artery in 1962, inner unrest became once
1908 Born Lena Krassner in New York.
again the driving force behind her art. She created
1926 Begins her training at the
a number of principal works such as Gate (1959) and Women's Art School of the
Cooper Union, later going on to
Gaea (1966), which are considered to be among the
the Art Students League and
most important works of Abstract Expressionism. National Academy of Design.
Pupil of Hans Hofmann, among
Lee Krasner died in 1984, one year after a number of
others.
major retrospectives to mark her 75th birthday, includ¬ 1941 Meets Jackson Pollock.
1945 Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock
ing one in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
marry and move to Long Island.
1956 Jackson Pollock dies in a road

accident.
dependent on Pollock. "I personally was not domin¬
1984 Dies 19 June in New York.
ated by Pollock," said Krasner, "but the entire art
FURTHER READING:
world was." To this day she still bears the title of
Robert Hobbs, Lee Krasner, Abbeville
"Action Widow," which was coined in 1972 by the art Press, New York, 1993

critic B.H. Friedman in 1972. He accused the female

surviving dependants of Abstract Expressionist artists
of displaying an artistic dependence on their partners'
works. The works of Pollock and Krasner reveal that
they were influenced by each other, with her thought¬
ful, far-sighted criticism of Pollock's action paintings
being of great importance.

Controlled Chaos left:

Abstract No. 2 (Little Images),1946-1948,
When Pollock found himself in a creative crisis in the
oil on canvas, 52 X59 cm, Instituto
early 1950s and started drinking heavily, Lee Krasner Valenciano de Arte Moderna Generalitat
Valenciana (IVAM Centre)
found a way of escaping the problems in their rela¬
tionship by putting more energy into her work as an above:
Photograph of Lee Krasner,
artist, and she became progressively more successful.
two weeks after Jackson Pollock's death,
Following her "black-out period" in the 1940s, when 30 August 1956
106 107 LOUISE BOURGEOIS

JOSEPH BEUYS

DAVID HOCKNEY

1939-1945 World War II

1914-1918 World War I 1942 L’Etranger (Albert Camu
1907 b. Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer

IMPRESSIONISM 1860-1910 1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940

......"ini.....".........mu.minimum.mu
860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945
 1969 Woodstock music festival
1952 Elvis Presley rises to fame 1986 Chernobyl disaster
1962 Cuba crisis 1973 Watergate Affair 2001 9/n attacks on United States

TRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

2004 Tsunami flood catastrophe
r
in Asia

■■^llllllililimillllilllllllllllllllllllllllll|iiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiMimmi...mi.......mm.. ii ...........
1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 203

LOUISE BOURGEOIS
“Mj name is Louise Josephine Bourgeois. I was born 24 December 1911, in Paris. All my work in the past
fifty years, all my subjects, have found their inspiration in my childhood. My childhood has never lost its magic,
it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama ” Louise Bourgeois, 1994

To this day, Louise Bourgeois, now in her 90s, still Emotional Abstraction
bases her artistic output on her own life, with the One of Bourgeois's best-known works, which dates
emphasis being on the shaping of memory, and on from 1974, settles scores with her own father, who
drawing on events in her turbulent past. It is her cheated on his wife for years with the daughter's
conviction that only those who work autobiograph¬ governess. Called Destruction of the Father, it is a room
ically, focusing on their own person and feelings, installation like a cave, where only bones are visible.
who can really be universal and universally under¬ From 1994, her memories of her mother are explored
stood. in variations on the theme of a spider; a giant ex¬
Louise Bourgeois studied mathematics before ample made of steel, Maman, was on show in
enrolling at various art colleges, initially in Paris, then London at the opening of the Tate Modern in 2000.
(after her marriage to American art historian Robert In the extensive group of works called Cells begun
Goldwater) in New York, at the Art Students League. mid-1980s, cage-like installations with mysterious
She worked as a painter, but later took up sculpture. furnishings tell of inner realities. Even when the
A common theme in her early pictures was Femmes statements Bourgeois makes sound simple, her
1911 Born 25 December in Paris.
Maison—women's bodies whose heads are shut up in works are never easy to interpret. That in no way
1932 Starts as a student of mathemat¬
a house, a metaphor for the social position of women diminishes the fascination of the works of the grande ics in Paris, but switches to art at
the Ecole du Louvre, then to the
and their confinement in domestic matters. dame of contemporary art, who, though well over 90,
Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the
is still creatively at work. Academie de la Grand Chaumiere.
1938 Marries Robert Goldwater and
Playing with Ambiguity
moves to New York, where she
In her sculptural work, Bourgeois has tried out a wide studies at the Art Students
League. Meets Surrealist artists
range of materials. Her early figures were stele-like
such as Breton and Ernst.
figures of wood. In the 1960s, she was among the 1945 Has her first solo exhibition.
1973 Robert Goldwater dies.
first artists to experiment with amorphous materials
1977 She is awarded an honorary doc¬
such as latex and synthetic resin. The result was torate by Yale University.
1982 Major retrospective at Museum of
women, hybrids, and goddesses modeled on ancient
Modern Art, New York.
fertility idols. She handled sexual themes and 1993 Represents the USA at the Venice
Biennale.
taboos with unusual directness for the time. The
mischievous irony with which Bourgeois created her Louise Bourgeois lives and works in
New York.
works is evident in a famous photograph by Robert
Mapplethorpe, showing her roguishly clutching her FURTHER READING:
Scott Lyon-Wall, Louise Bourgeois: the
phallus-like Fillette (1968) under one arm, an impish
Reticent Child, Cheim and Reed, New
smile about her lips. As always, there is at the same York, 2004

time a female look about the object.

above:
left page: Louise Bourgeois in her studio, 1988
Cell (Three White Marble Spheres), 1993, steel, glass, marble, mirror,
213.3 x 213.3 x 213.3 cm. Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri following double page:
Deconstruction of the Father, 1974,
right: plaster, latex, wood, fabric and red light,
Maman, 1999, steel and marble, 9.27 x 8.92 x 10.24 m, Tate Modern, 237.8 x 362.3 x 248.6 cm, Artist's private
London,2000 collection
 110 I 111 MERET OPPENHEIM

JOSEPH BEUYS

ANDY WARHOL

1914-1918 World War I 1939-1945 World War II

1945 b. Jacqueline du Pre,

1917 b. Ella Fitzgerald, American
English cellist
jazz singer

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

LL 1II I I 1 I I I I 1II
1925 1930

Ma gouvernante - my nurse - Mein

Kindermddchen, 1936, metal, leather
and paper, 14 x 21 x 33 cm, Moderna
Museet, Stockholm
L952 Elvis Presley 1969 Woodstock music festival
rises to fame
1964 The United States enters the Vietnam War
1958 Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
(Simone de Beauvoir) 1973 Watergate Affair
POP ART 1960-1975
... mum...1.i...
MERET OPPENHEIM
“Who covers the soup spoon -with precious fur? Little Meret. Who has outstripped us? Little Meret”
Max Ernst describing Meret Oppenheim on an invitation to the first exhibition of her art in 1916
Meret Oppenheim was bom in 1913 in Berlin-
Charlottenburg. Her mother was Swiss, and her
father a German Jewish doctor. In 1932 she briefly
attended several art schools in Paris, but mostly
worked independently.
Breakfast in Fur
Shortly after her 23rd birthday, she achieved a sen¬
sational success with Object, a cup, saucer, and spoon
covered in the skin of a gazelle. It was purchased in
the year of its creation by the Museum of Modern Art
in New York. The object rapidly became one of
the most-quoted and most-portrayed works of the
Surrealist movement. Also Ma gouvernante
nurse - Mein Kindermadchen was created during this
period: a pair of women's high-heeled shoes, tied
together and draped with paper collars and present¬
ed on a silver tray.
Meret Oppenheim moved in Surrealist circles along¬
side Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst,
with whom she regularly exhibited her works. She was
regarded as the muse of the male artists, who were
considerably older than she was, a reputation which
was strengthened by the photograph Veiled Erotic
taken by Man Ray in 1933.
In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel. After the wide
public recognition in Paris, which rapidly reduced the
young artist's oeuvre to a single work, she plunged
into a deep artistic crisis that accompanied her until
the 1950s. During those years she produced only a
small number of drawings, and both naturalistic and
abstract paintings. Oppenheim either failed to finish
many of her works or even destroyed them.
1986 Challenger space shuttle explodes after takeoff
2001 9/11 attacks on United States
2004 Tsunami flood catastrophe in Asia
..111111.1' " " n " " " 1' 111
2005 2010 2015 2020
11
2025
1 1
2030
1
2035
1 M 1'
1111111 11 1
2040
"You will not be granted liberty. You must grasp
it for yourself."
A new creative beginning did not occur until 1954,
with the creation of poems, drawings, collages and
objects that also sometimes harked back to sketches
and ideas from her time in Paris. She experimented
with techniques and materials without committing
herself to any one single style.
In 1959, Oppenheim worked one last time with the
Surrealists when they invited her to repeat her Spring
Celebration, which she had previously staged in pri¬
vate. It consisted of a banquet on the body of a naked
woman. Oppenheim believed that her original inten¬
- my tions would be perverted by this creation of a
1913 Born 6 October in Berlin.
voyeuristic performance for men.
1932 Sporadically attends classes at
At the end of the 1960s, the works of Meret Oppen¬ the Academie de la Grand
Chaumiere in Paris, and joins the
heim were rediscovered. When she was awarded the
Paris Surrealists.
Kunstpreis (Art Prize) of the City of Basel in 1975, she 1936 The Museum of Modern Art in
New York buys her fur-lined
gave a highly regarded speech on the situation of
teacup.
the "female artist," and demanded that "the taboos 1937 Moves to Basel, and attends arts
and crafts college.
with which women have been held for thousands of
1949 Marries Wolfgang La Roche,
years in a state of subjugation should no longer be moves to Berne.
1985 Dies 15 November in Basel.
regarded as valid. You will not be granted liberty.
You must grasp it for yourself." Meret Oppenheim FURTHER READING:
Thomas Levy (ed.) and others, Meret
died in Basel in 1985.
Oppenheim: From Breakfast in Fur and
Back Again, Kerber, Bielefeld (Germany)
and New York, 2003
Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler and
Matthias Frehner (eds.) and others,
Meret Oppenheim: Retrospective: "an
enormously tiny bit of a lot," Hatje
Cantz, Ostfildern (Germany) and New
York, 2007.
Meret Oppenheim, undated
112|113
Object, 1936, teacup, saucer and spoon
covered in fur, height 7 cm, The Museum
of Modern Art, New York
114 | 115 NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

MAX BECKMANN MARINA ABRAMOVIC

1906 b. Josephine Baker, French-American dancer,
1959 The Tin Drum
singer, civil rights campaigner The Second Sex
1949 (Gunter Grass)
1909 Hilde Domin, German writer (Simone de
1910 Marie Curie isolates radium Beauvoir)
1962 Cuba crisis

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975
1968 Suppression of "Prague Spring"
in Czechoslovakia
1968 Student unrest in Germany and 1980 Ronald Reagan becomes
various other European cities President of the United States
1973 Watergate Affair

JlllllJ'iil|!||lllllimillllllii'illlllllll!llimm.1111111" .1.........iiimnm : i
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 205

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

Niki de Saint Phalle started out as an action artist rebelling against set conventions before she found a highly
individual style to express her ideas about being a woman in society—the “nana figures,” embodiments of self-
aware femininity and irrepressible joie de vivre.

In the early 1960s, a young artist in Paris caused a stir the architectural sculpture Hon-en Katedral (She-a
with her spectacular "shootings"—Niki de Saint Cathedral) welcomed visitors in through splayed legs
Phalle, who had initially become known as a photo¬ into a kind of pleasure park inside the figure.
graphic model for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and other
journals. After a serious nervous breakdown, she The Tarot Garden
turned to full-time art, self-taught, which she found In the early 1970s, she decided she would make a
therapeutic. sculpture garden. It would include 22 monumental
figures based on tarot card figures, and the artist's
Executing Art highly individual style would make the whole place a
For Saint Phalle, shooting with a pistol at modeled single work of art. In 1983, the first completed fig¬
plaster reliefs was a release of her feelings and aggres¬ ure—the Empress, a sphinx in the center of the
sions: "I fired at men, at society with its injustice, and garden—became her home and studio for seven
at myself." She prepared the targets in advance with years while she worked there. Eventually, after
concealed bags of paint, which splattered color on decades of work, the Giardino dei Tarocchi in
1930 Born Catherine Marie-Agnes Fal
the relief when they burst. The works of art thereby Garavicchio in Tuscany opened in May 1998. By then,
de Saint Phalle 29 October in
arising by chance she called tirs (shooting paintings). Niki de Saint Phalle had already retreated to the Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris.
1933 The family moves to Greenwich,
Among the targets was a Venus de Milo sculpture, a milder climate of California, her lungs seriously
Connecticut.
replica of the famous original. Shooting it was an damaged by working with polyesters. She died in 1937 They move to New York City.
1950 She marries Harry Mathews.
attempt to free herself from the power of the classical 2002 of pulmonary emphysema.
1951 Daughter Laura born.
sculptural tradition. FHer shootings won her accept¬ 1952 They move to Paris. One year
later Niki de Saint Phalle has a
ance among the French Nouveaux Realistes group of
serious nervous breakdown.
artists, who included Daniel Spoerri, Yves Klein, Jean While convalescing, she begins
to paint.
Tinguely, and Christo.
1955 Son Philip born.
i960 Meets Jean Tinguely.
1971 Marries Jean Tinguely.
Nana Power
1998 Tarot Garden in Garavicchio,
The highly adaptable "nana" concept was in effect Tuscany, opened. Moves to
California.
an alternative art to the shootings. The brightly
2002 Dies 21 May in San Diego,
colored, amply endowed polyester female figures California.

are reminiscent of archaic fertility goddesses, and

FURTHER READING:
according to Saint Phalle were "harbingers of a new Niki de Saint Phalle, Traces: An
Autobiography Remembering 1930-1949,
matriarchal age ... I wanted these good, bounteous,
Acatos, Lausanne (Switzerland), 1999
happy mothers to take over the world." One of the Carla Schulz-Hoffmann (ed.) and
others, Niki de Saint Phalle: My Art,
first of these to establish her reputation was the out¬
My Dreams, Prestel, Munich and
size nana figure exhibited in 1966 at Moderna Museet New York, 2003

in Stockholm. Twenty-eights meters (92 feet) long,

left:
Moderation, 1985, painted polyester,
left page: 72 x 53 x 23 cm, Sprengel-Museum,
The Magician and the High Priestess in the Tarot Garden Hannover
(Giardino dei Tarocchi), 1983, iron frame coated
with cement and covered with a mosaic of mirrors, above:
glass and colored ceramics, Tuscany Niki de Saint Phalle, 1980
 116| 117 EVA HESSE

JOSEPH BEUYS

JENNY HOLZER ——— i ■ i

1902 b. Leni Riefenstahl, German film 1939-1945 World War II

director and photographer 1955 WMng for Godot
(Samuel Beckett)

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONS 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

.mu...................mi.. 1111111111 in 111111

1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Right After, 1969, fiberglass, polyester

resin, wire, 548.6 x 121.9 cm, three

sections, Milwaukee Art Museum,
Gift of Friends of Art, 1970
 T1 1986 Elie Wiesel awarded Nobel Peace Prize
»64 The United States enters
the Vietnam War 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa
1980 Founding of the Solidarnosc 2001 9/n attacks on United States
trade union in Poland
2004 Tsunami flood catastrophe in Asia

..1.1111...mi.linn.
M1111111111111111111111 ii 11111.mu.11.. .1... in n ......
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

EVA HESSE
“I remember that I have always worked with contradictions and opposing forms, because they correspond with
my idea of life. The entire absurdity of life. For me, life was always full of contradictions.” Eva Hesse

In 1970, the cover of the magazine Artforum featured
photograph of Eva Hesse's work Contingent,
which had been created the year before. The most
important mouthpiece of the avant-garde art scene
in New York at the time thus made the artist famous
overnight. One month later she died of a brain tumor
at the age of 34.
Art or Life
The publication of Eva Hesse's diaries in the early
1970s focused public interest on her tragic life story
while at the same time distorting the view of her
artistic work. She was born in 1936 in Hamburg as
the daughter of a Jewish lawyer; after the Nazis
came to power, she was sent to the Netherlands by
her parents on a "Kindertransport." In 1939, her family
succeeded in emigrating to New York; those relatives
who remained behind were killed in various concen¬
Chaos and Order
Many of her works hover between painting and
sculpture. In Contingent, Hesse used lengths of gauze
fabric that had been strengthened with fiberglass
and dipped in latex as if they were canvases on which,
however, nothing has been painted. The materials
appear organic and create a decidedly sensuous
attraction. By creating a series with slight variations,
the artist encouraged the observer to consider the
aspect of infinite repetition, which she understood
as the way to convey absurdity. In Right After (1969),
cords which are invisibly fixed to hooks on the ceil¬
ing open up in a three-dimensional form that makes
clear the narrow distinction between chaos and order.
1936 Born n January in Hamburg,
The work was created immediately after an opera¬
Germany.
tion on the tumor that caused her death the follow¬ 1938 She and her sister are put on a
children's train (Kindertransport)
ing year.
to Holland.
1939 The family escape to the USA,

and settle in New York.

tration camps. Eva Hesse's mother committed sui¬
1946 Her mother kills herself.
cide when Eva was ten years old. 1954 Starts at the Yale School of Art

and Architecture (till 1959).

1961 Marries Tom Doyle.
A Period of Intense Creativity 1966 The couple divorce.
1970 Dies of a brain tumor on 22 May.
After studying art in New York, within a decade Eva
Hesse produced some 100 sculptures, more than 850 FURTHER READING:
Griselda Pollock and Vanessa Corby
drawings and over 100 paintings—an oeuvre which
(eds.). Encountering Eva Hesse, Prestel,
occupies a central position in the development of Munich and New York, 2006
Elisabeth Sussman, Fred Wasserman
international art during the 1960s. Hesse took up and
and others, Eva Hesse: Sculpture, Jewish
reinterpreted the paradigms of the two trends that Museum, New York / Yale University
Press, New Haven, 2006
dominated the scene at the time: Minimal Art and
Pop Art.
Her early works included self-portraits, gouaches, and
collages. During a visit to Germany in 1964-1965 she
worked on paintings and a first series of drawings—
abstract Expressionist pictures that Hesse character¬
ized as "wild space''—as well as three-dimensional
reliefs. This period marks the transition to her later
sculptural work that led to her artistic breakthrough
as a sculptor. While emphasizing their intrinsic
esthetic value she experimented with new materials
such as fiberglass, latex, polyester, rubber, and resin.
Eva Hesse, 1960
118 119 below:
Accession II, 1967, steel and rubber,

78.1x 78.1 x 78.1 cm, The Detroit

Institute of Arts

right page:
Contingent, 1969, fiberglass,

polyester resin, latex, cotton fabric,

350 x 630 x 109 cm (variable), 8 elements,

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 ; Y'
i||

+<m
■ppp
■

fSaBk
 120|121 REBECCA HORN

ANDY WARHOL

SOPHIE CALLE _m
1912 On the Spiritual in Art (Wassily Kandinsky)
1917 October Revolution in Russia 1940 Winston Churchill becomes 1959 The 14th Dalai
Prime Minister of the UK Lama flees into
1905 b. Greta Garbo, 1920 Women's voting rights in
Swedish actress the US and Canada exile in India

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

...mu........ i in 1111111 in ...... i .mi.... .11111111111II111111111! 1II11II11II M 111111111111

1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965
1961 Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
1975 Andrei Sacharov awarded Nobel Peace Prize
1971 Death in Venice
(Luchino Visconti)
' 1 1 1 1 11 j 1 1 1 ' 1 1 1 '1' 1 1 ■ 1 1111 1 1 ' 1 ; ■11 ..11 1 1 1 i 1 1 ■1' ' ■.. *' ' ' .1
1970 1975 1980 1985
REBECCA HORN
To this day, Rebecca Horn continues to work, on a rigorously developed oeuvre
that combines a variety of media: sculpture, performance, video, and film.
During her studies at the Hochschule der Bildenden
Kiinste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Hamburg, Rebecca
Horn began creating objects that were adapted to
the body. Extra-long gloves, masks made of feathers
or fans were designed to extend the awareness of
the body and were presented by the artist in perform¬
ances. Horn described these events as "Personal
Art"—they took place without an audience and were
planned down to the last detail.
In her room sculpture The Chinese Fiancee (1976),
which consists of a small room constructed with six
entrances, she is also dealing with physical experi¬
ences. When the observer enters, the doors close,
the light is extinguished, and voices fill the narrow
space—until the doors suddenly open again and
the visitor is released. Horn's work is concerned
with existential experiences such as fear and
imprisonment. Many subjects refer to biographical
events, in this case a long spell in a sanatorium,
which was necessary as a result of the lung damage
she suffered from working with polyester.
Horn progressed to producing films via the photo¬
graphic, film, and video documentation of her
actions. Her body sculptures also reappear in The
Dancing Partner (1978) and her first feature film
Buster's Bedroom (1990). Some of the props used in
the films eventually ended up as autonomous works
of art in important collections, including the piano
Concert for Anarchy, now in Tate Modern in London,
from a scene in her cinematographic homage to
Buster Keaton.
left page:
River of the Moon: Room of Lovers, 1992, nine violins,
metal construction, motors, installation the the Hotel
Peninsular, Barcelona, Private collection
1992 Sex, Art, and American Culture (Camille Paglia)
11 I ' .. I 111 ! ' I I I .... ' 1 I ! I ( .I
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055
The Atmosphere of the Room
In the 1980s and 1990s, Horn increasingly produced
mechanical works made from everyday objects, as
well as installations approximating to a specific
place and its history. The Contrary Concert (1987) in
Munster is reminiscent of a former Nazi prison.
Small steel hammers knock constantly like prisoners
against the walls of the tower, thus recalling past
acts of violence. In The Tower of the Nameless Ones
Horn refers to the Balkan War, in Locusts’ Chorus to
the Gulf War.
Even in "neutral" places, Rebecca Horn attempts to
"make the music of the space ring out." In
Barcelona in 1992, she created the installation The
1944 Born 24 March in Michelstadt,
River of the Moon, the first part of which was pre¬
Germany.
sented in a hat factory. It contained keys for seven 1964 Becomes a student at the College
of Fine Arts in Hamburg.
rooms in a seedy old hotel where rooms could be
1971 Studies at St. Martin School of
rented by the hour. Here, in various rooms, she told Art in London.
1972 Takes part in documenta in
a love story in all its aspects by means of minimalist
Kassel, moves to New York.
arrangements: violins operated by motors played 1989 Takes up a professorship at the
Berliner Hochschule.
songs, and guns aimed at each other in rumpled
beds. Rebecca Horn lives and works in Berlin
and New York.
Since her first one-woman show in Berlin in 1973,
Horn's works have been regularly exhibited in Europe FURTHER READING:
Armin Zweite, Katharina Schmidt, Doris
and the United States. After spending many years in
von Drathen and others, Rebecca Horn:
New York, Rebecca Horn now lives primarily in Berlin. Bodylandscapes: Drawings, Sculptures,
Installations 1964-2004, Hatje Cantz,
Ostfildern-Ruit (Germany), 2005
Carl Haenlein (ed.) and others, Rebecca
Horn: The Glance of Infinity, Scalo,
Zurich, 1997
above:
Rebecca Horn, undated
page 122:
The Chinese Fiancee, 1976, black lac¬
quered wood, metal construction, motor,
tape recording with Chinese women's
voices, 248 x 238 cm, Private collection
page 123:
Concert for Buchenwald, Part 1, 1989,
Tram depot, Weimar
 '

Ar
■
' .
!

i 1 H ,1 • ^

M* ,vVv'
124|125 BARBARA KRUGER

SALVADOR DALI

MONA HATOUM
1959 Completion of
Guggenheim
1949 Death of a Salesman
Museum in New
(Arthur Miller) York (Frank Lloy
Wright)
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

I III I I I I I I I 111 I 1 I I I !
I960 1965

MMM

battleground
 1990 Reunification of Germany
1975 Juan Carlos becomes 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall

King of Spain 1985 Michail Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1982 Falklands War between Argentina 2003 Start of the Iraq War
and the United Kingdom

111111111111111111111111111111........1....... m 11 m 111.1.11111 ..mu...minimii.him.

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

BARBARA KRUGER
Barbara Kruger is one of the most important conceptual artists on the international scene, noted
for her large-format collages ofpictures and texts exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces.

Barbara Kruger's collage-type works have an unmis¬
takable style: in-your-face slogans in Futura Bold
Italic reversed-out in red (i.e. white letters on a
red background), aggressively demanding attention
against a background of enlarged, low-resolution
black-and-white photographs. Once you are familiar
with the style, recognition is instant if you encounter
it directly in the hubbub of everyday life, e.g. on
hoardings, public transport, and walls—places
where there is competition from a flood of other
pictorial and textual stimuli. Kruger started out by
publicizing her work herself in the 1980s, fly-sticking
her posters at night along the streets of New York.
ites. Her collages, objects, installations, and videos
have found their way into major museums such as
the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in
New York. At the 2005 Biennale in Venice, Kruger
was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achieve¬
ment. Besides being an artist, she is also a professor,
curator, author, and critic. She lives in Los Angeles
and New York.

Food for Thought 1945 Born in Newark, New Jersey.

1964 Becomes an art student at
Often perceived only for a brief moment, the messages Syracuse University, and from
are intended to provide food for thought. Behind the 1965 attends courses at the
Parson School of Design.
apparently familiar turns of speech there often lurk 1974 Holds her first solo show in
ambiguities. Your body is a battleground (1989), for New York.
1975 Takes teaching posts at
example, was written on a poster to be used in a universities and art institutions
Washington demonstration about the right to abor¬ in the USA.

tion. It was subsequently adapted in numerous other Barbara Kruger lives and works in
countries in the struggle to assert women's rights. New York and Los Angeles.

I shop, therefore I am is another slogan (adapted FURTHER READING:

from the French philosopher Descartes) that com¬ Kate Linker, Love for Sale: The Words
and Pictures of Barbara Kruger, Harry
ments on the behavior of people in a consumer N. Abrams, New York, 1996
society, reducing consumers to shopping zombies.
"I try to deal with the complexities of power and
social life," says Kruger, "but as far as the visual
presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree
of difficulty. I want people to be drawn into the
space of the work.”
Barbara Kruger studied at Syracuse University and
Parsons School of Design in New York, as a pupil of
photographer Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel, the
former art director of Harper’s Bazaar. Before becom¬ left page:
ing a professional artist, she worked at various Your body is a battleground, 1989
agencies and as a graphic artist at Conde Nast. With left:
a background in the esthetics and linguistic strat¬ Untitled (I shop therefore I am), 1987
egies of the media, she was best placed to exploit above:
their mechanisms and turn them into their oppos¬ Barbara Kruger, undated
126|127

Untitled (We don't need another hero),

1987
128|129 MARINA ABRAMOVIC

DAVID HOCKNEY

PIPILOTTI RIST ,i .m.i.

1948 Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

1925 b. Ruth First, South African anti- 1957 Albert Camus
apartheid campaigner, journalist, awarded the Nobel
sociologist 1939-1945 World War II Prize for Literature

EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920
 Dr. Zhivago (Boris Pasternak) 2001 Women's voting rights rescinded
1964 The United States enters in Kuwait following introduction
the Vietnam War in 1999

1965 Ariel (Sylvia Plath) 1990 Reunification of Germany

1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 ii 111 n i in 1111111 in 11111111 ..........

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 201: 2020 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Marina Abramovic uses her body as a medium for artistic experiences. Behind the execution
lies the idea of a purification of the spirit, the aim being to pass on energy to the audience.

Marina Abramovic, one of the leading representat¬ gone during such processes constitute the work of art
ives of Body Art, likes to refer to herself as the itself.
"Grandmother of Performance." During the 1970s
she became famous for her radical actions, which Balkan Baroque
often lasted for several days at a time. During them More recently, the narrative content of her perform¬
she forced herself into states of total exhaustion in ances has become more marked. In 1997 she was
order to discover and extend the limits of her phys¬ awarded the Golden Lion at the Biennale in Venice
ical and mental awareness. for one of her most important works, Balkan Baroque.
The performance takes as its central theme the trau¬
Body Performances matic memories aroused by her Serbian-Montenegrin
In a series of performances she consciously inflicted origins, which acquired a new topicality as a result
both pain and injuries on herself. In Rhythm 10 (1973) of the war in Bosnia. Surrounded by copper vessels
she stabbed a knife very rapidly between her splayed filled with water, and by video installations showing
fingers; in Rhythm 0 (1974), she presented herself to the artist and her parents, she spent four days clear¬
gallery visitors as an object and handed them a series ing 2,500 kilos (5,500 pounds) of cattle bones from a 1946 ®orn m Bel8rad^ ^9g0:’la)'ia
v J (now the capital of Serbia),
of real objects, including nails, alcohol, a whip, and a heap. While doing SO, she sang songs from her 1965 Enrolls as a student at the
saw; some visitors became so involved she was almost homeland Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade.
1975 Moves to Amsterdam and meets
killed during this event. The reaction of the audience Ulay (F. Uwe Laysiepen).
1976 Begins her collaboration with
formed an important part of her performances, either
Ulay.
as participating observers or by means of unsolicited 1988 They terminate their relationship
and artistic collaboration with
or intentional involvement.
The Lovers; Walk on the Great
In 1975 Abramovic met the German artist Ulay (F. Wall of China.
1997 Awarded Golden Lion at the
Uwe Laysiepen). With him she developed a form of
Venice Biennale
greatly reduced double act in which the pair became
Marina Abramovic lives and works in
the subject of the event. In 1988 they ended their
Amsterdam and New York.
artistic collaboration, as well as their personal rela¬
FURTHER READING:
tionship, by means of a staged hike along the Great
Velimir Abramovic and others, Marina
Wall of China. In The Lovers. Walk on the Great Wall of Abramovic: Artist Body Performances
7969-1998, Charta, Milan, 1998.
China, Ulay started out from the Gobi Desert, while
Germano Celant, Marina Abramovic:
Marina Abramovic started her journey from the Public Body: Installations and Objects,
7965-2001, Charta, Milan, 2001.
Yellow Sea. They met in the middle of the Wall,
Marina Abramovic, Marina Abramovic:
before finally separating after this well-staged sym¬ Balkan Epic, edited by Adelina von
Fiirstenberg, Skira, Milan, 2006.
bolic act.
After this event, Abramovic related her works closely
to objects, linked with the attempt to enable her
audience to cross over into a new state of conscious¬
ness. Red Dragon is one of her new sculptures, which
left page:
demand that one makes individual experiences
Balkan Baroque, 1997, performance
through body contact with "transitory objects" like installation, Venice Biennale, 1997

pink quartz and copper, in order to experience their above:

energy directly. For Abramovic, the changes under¬ Marina Abramovic on Sardinia, 1976
left
The Lovers: Walk on the Great Wall
of China (with Ulay), 1988, performance.
The Great Wall of China, 1988

below:
Rhythm 0, 1974, performance.
Studio Morra, Naples, 1974
 132|133 ISA GENZKEN

JACKSON POLLOCK

LEE KRASNER _

1922 In Search of Lost Time 1944 Women's voting rights in France

(Marcel Proust)
1939-1945 World War II 1945 Atom bombs dropped on
1926 b. Marilyn Monroe, American film star Hiroshima and Nagasaki

EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiniiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMmiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiM
1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Luke, 1986, concrete, steel, 209 x 63 x 49.5 cm

 1990 Reunification of Germany
1975 Memoirs of a Survivor
(Doris Lessing)
S 5 1980 1985 1990
ISA GENZKEN
Time and again, ha Genzken undermines esthetic conventions and expectations with her sculptures. Through
unusual combinations of materials, fragmentation, and shifts of scale, familiar objects appear in a new guise.
Isa Genzken studied at the Hochschule fur Bildende
Kunste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Hamburg, at the
Hochschule der Kunste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin,
and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Academy
of Art) in Diisseldorf under Gerhard Richter, whom
she married in 1982 but later divorced.
Wood, Plaster, Concrete ...
Her predominantly sculptural oeuvre, which expands
contemporary sculpture into new realms thanks to
her countless experiments, constantly surprises with
new approaches. At the end of the 1970s, she started
constructing, on a computer, wooden floor sculp¬
tures that were several meters long and in various
geometric forms. From the mid-igSos, she began
creating plaster and concrete sculptures on iron
frames or pedestals that recall architectural models
and examine the contrasts between lightness and
heaviness. In the following phase of her work, she
turned her attention to window sculptures and other
architectural details made of poured epoxy resin.
The various groups of works permit us to recognize an
examination of the esthetic conventions of her every¬
day surroundings: architecture, design, the media,
and products of the culture and mass industries. At
the same time, the various groups establish links
with a variety of different historical concepts of sculp¬
ture, notably the Constructivism of the 1920s and
Minimal Art.
Starting from the assumption that a "lack of space"
exists, Genzken developed concepts for openings
and the removal of barriers. These include large-for¬
mat works for public spaces such as ABC, produced
for the exhibition Skulptur Projekte in Munster in 1987.
She drew on the built-up environment and created a
construction of concrete and steel that established a
sort of bridge and gateway between the main univer¬
sity building and the outer spaces.
2001 Ariel Sharon becomes Prime Minister
of Israel
2001 g/n attacks on United States
1995 2000 2005 2010 201S 2020 2025 2030
The Esthetics of the Everyday
Since the end of the 1990s, Genzken has worked pri¬
marily with plastics, mirrors, and everyday objects,
including newspapers and magazines, in her collages
and collage books. Thus at documenta 11 in Kassel she
showed two Spiegel series, each created from more
than 100 photos from the magazine of the same
name, which in the new arrangement presented a
grotesque picture of the reality of media reporting.
After 9/11, which Genzken experienced in New York,
her works became louder and more colorful. At the
52nd Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2007,
Genzken was the artist who presented the German
contribution with Oil, a shrill social satire in which
she criticized the industrial nations: "Whether there is
war, or whether there isn't—that's what it's about.
About energy and oil."
2035 2040 2045 2050
1948 Born in Bad Oldesloe, Germany.
1969 Begins her studies at the Fine
Arts College in Hamburg, switch¬
ing first to the Berlin College of
Arts, then the Art Academy in
Diisseldorf.
1982 Marries artist Gerhard Richter.
1990 Becomes Visiting Professor of
Sculpture at the College of Fine
Arts in Berlin,
1991-1992 Visiting Professor of
Sculpture at the Stadel School
in Frankfurt.
2007 Designs the German pavilion for
the Venice Biennale.
Isa Genzken lives and works in Berlin.
FURTHER READING:
Alex Farquharson, Diedrich Diede-
richsen, and Sabine Breitwieser, Isa
Genzken, Phaidon, London and New
York, 2006
Nicholas Schafhausen, Isa Genzken:
German Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2007,
Dumont, Cologne, 2007
above:
Isa Genzken, undated
left;
Oil,2007, installation, German Pavilion,
Biennale Venice, 2007
134|135 JENNY HOLZER

MARK ROTHKO

BARBARA KRUGER

1950-1953 Korea War

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

....
1950 1955 1960 1965

Untitled (from: Truisms, Inflammatory

Essays, The Living Series, Under a Rock,
Laments and Child Text), 1989-1990,
LED, 41.9 x 4900 x 15.2 cm, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
 1980 Leaden Wings (Zhang Jie)
1975 Start of the civil 1981 First flight by the Columbia space shuttle 1986 The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco)
war in Lebanon
1983 Resignation of Imelda Marcos
1988 Benazir Bhutto becomes the first
1973 Watergate Affair 1984 Kandinsky retrospective in Paris female Prime Minister of Pakistan

MINI
....mu.... 11111 in m 11 hi in in n mn .....
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

JENNY HOLZER
The conceptual use of written language lies at the heart of the work of the American artist Jenny Holzer.
From the beginning, her aim was to convey messages, especially in public spaces. The artist sees herself as a
“speaker who makes private fears public.”

At the end of the 1970s, Jenny Holzer started a Political Art and Concrete Poetry
collection of aphorisms and everyday sayings. In addition to language stereotypes, Jenny Holzer
Throughout the entire city of New York, you could also works with texts that confront the observer
find examples of her so-called Truisms: You are the with the explosive reality of our society. Da, wo Frauen
victim of the rules by which you live and Fear paralyzes sterben, bin id1 hellwach ("There, where women die,
more than anything could be read on advertisement I am wide awake"), was the title of the weekly
hoardings, railroad cars, road signs, and flyers. In magazine supplement of the Suddeutsche Zeitung she
Inflammatory Essays (1979-1982), Living (1980-1982), designed in 1993. To commemorate the war in Bosnia,
and Survival (1983-1985) there followed further Holzer had it printed in a mixture of blood and ink. It
language series, inspired in some cases by the was an outrageous attempt to draw attention to the
writings of politicians and philosophers. rapes and sexually motivated killings in Bosnia.
In addition to social and political themes, Holzer's
Messages in an Urban Space works also draw on personal experience, such as the
In 1982, Holzer achieved her real artistic breakthrough feelings of a mother in Mother and Child (1990) and
1950 Born in Gallipolis, Ohio.
when she executed her first work on an electronic OH (2001).
1975 Enrolls as a student of painting at
neon sign in Times Square in New York. Surrounded the Rhode Island School of
Design in Providence.
by the multiplicity of advertising surfaces, whose
1977 Moves to New York.
means of representation she uses, she attempted to 1982 Her work is shown in the form of
aphorisms on a constantly chang¬
disturb readers for a moment in the middle of their
ing advertising LED billboard in
everyday life and so encourage them to reflect. On Times Square, New York.
1989-1990 Holds solo show at the
the advertising space, which changed constantly,
Guggenheim Museum, New York.
there followed a succession of sentences which, 1990 Awarded the Golden Lion at the

Venice Biennale.
when considered individually, appeared to be "true,"
but which when read in sequence seemed question¬ Jenny Holzer lives and works in
Hoosick, New York.
able, in that they contradicted each other or cancelled
each other out. FURTHER READING:
Michael Auping, Jenny Holzer, Universe,
In her more recent light installations, Holzer used
New York, 1992
xenon spotlights to project statements onto the walls David Joselit, Joan Simon, and Renata
Salecl, Jenny Holzer, Phaidon, London,
of buildings, squares, or rivers, as in her Arno project
1998
for the Biennale in Florence in 1996. For the retro¬
spective in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in
New York in 1989-1990 she installed over 300 of her
messages in LED scrolling text in the rotunda of the
building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Additional
messages were engraved on granite benches that
were arranged in a circle, creating a telling contrast
to the immaterial transitoriness of the electronic
ticker-tape. At the same time, she also became the
first woman to design the American pavilion at the
Biennale in Venice (1990), which won the country
prize. Jenny Holzer, undated
136|137 MONA HATOUM

JACKSON POLLOCK

SOPHIE CALLE

1950-1953 Korea War

1939-1945 World War II

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

11111 M I I 1111111. I MM . II' .I M I 1111 M 111 H mi...mi. llllllllllll

1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1945 1950 1955 1965
 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom 2006 Hamas wins Palestinian elections

1986 Chernobyl disaster 1997 Madeleine Albright becomes Foreign

1974 Giscard d'Estaing becomes 1990 Reunification of Germany Minister of the United States
President of France
1993 Tansu Ciller becomes first female Prime Minister of Turkey

..... 111 111 M II 111 I 1111111 II 111111|| 111111 | 111 | | | 111111 I I I I 11 ..........1...min.mi
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

MONA HATOUM
With her acute awareness of political injustice, Mona Hatoum bases her works on experiences of
institutional power and violence, as well as threats to (and the vulnerability of) the individual.

Mona Hatoum was born to Palestinian parents in your body, your mind, your emotions, everything.”
Beirut in 1952. When civil war broke out in Lebanon In the Corps etranger installation, which was
in 1975) she happened to be in England, which pre¬ nominated for the Turner Prize in 1995, the impartial-
vented her returning to her homeland. Since then, looking eye of the camera becomes a constant sur¬
she has lived mainly in London, though she is fre¬ veillance: it investigates the surface of the artist's
quently on her travels in guest studios in Mexico City, body, then penetrates certain orifices in an endo¬
Texas, Venezuela, Berlin, and elsewhere. scopic journey of the inside of the body. In Mona
After studying at the Slade School of Art in London, Hatoum's work, the body becomes a metaphor of
Mona Hatoum gained a reputation for dramatic violence against the individual.
public performances in the early 1980s, reacting to
topical political subject matter. Like her later works,
they were geared towards direct communication with
the public. In one of her best-known works, Under
Siege (1982), naked and covered in clay in a poly¬
1952 Born in Beirut, Lebanon, to
thene container, she fought for hours to stand up,
Palestinian parents.
slipping and falling continually, so that viewers were 1975 Studies at the Byam Shaw School
of Art in London.
helpless bystanders of her role as victim. Against a
1981 Graduates from the Slade School
background of wars going on in many parts of the of Art, London.
1995 Nominated for the Turner Prize.
globe, her performance conveyed the futility and
senselessness of some human actions. Mona Hatoum lives and works in
London and Berlin.

"I try to build up expectations which are then FURTHER READING:

Michael Archer, Guy Brett, and
disrupted."
Catherine de Zegher, Mona Hatoum,
Since the end of the 1980s, Hatoum has continued her Phaidon, London, 1997
Edward W. Said and Sheena Wagstaff,
repertory of ideas and shapes in sculpture and large
Mona Hatoum: The Entire World as a
installations. In their precise choice of material and Foreign Land, Tate Gallery, London,
2000
perfect execution of form, her works manifest a prox¬
imity to minimalist sculpture and conceptual art, and
are at the same time enriched with personal or polit¬
ical content. Through changes in the material, dimen¬
sions or function, everyday objects become alien
objects that on a second glance reveal latent violence
or threat—swings with seats made of sharp-edged
left page:
steel, or a wheelchair with knives instead of handles.
Corps etranger, 1994, video installation
These initially unnoticed perils in esthetically pleas¬ with cylindrical wooden structure,
video projector, video player, amplifier
ing objects make highly memorable images of the and four speakers, 350 x 300 x 300 cm,
instability of the world. courtesy Centre Pompidou, Paris

Hatoum always emphasizes the physical aspect of her left:

art. “I did not want my work to be one-dimensional Corps etranger (detail), 1994

in the sense that it just appeals to the intellect. I above:

wanted it to be a complete experience that involves Mona Hatoum, undated
138 139 Silence,1994, laboratory glass
tubes, 127 x 92,7 x 59,1 cm, courtesy
Jay Jopling / White Cube, London
Untitled (wheelchair), 1998, stainless
steel and rubber, 97 x 50 x 84 cm,
courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube,
London
 140|141 SOPHIE CALLE

MARK ROTHKO m
CINDY SHERMAN

1948-1949 Equal rights for men and

women laid down in German
constitution

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

..11.......min.minimi...immnmii
1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

The Hotel, Room 25,1981

 2000 Tate Modern in
65 UNICEF awarded Nobel Peace Prize
London opened 2005 Angela Merkel becomes Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

1975 International Women's Year 2001 9/n attacks on United States

2003 Start of the Iraq War 2006 War in Lebanon

........""". -1 II1I1 1 1 1 1 1 I I III I 1 1 I II I I I I II 1 1 1 | 1 | | 1 1 | M | 1 | | | | 1 1 | | | . | | 1 | | 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 M M I * I M 1 I M 1 I’ II I I I..

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

SOPHIE CALLE
Sophie Calle is an exponent of “narrative photography.” Her arrangements of image and text are
about getting close to others, often surreptitiously, exploring the experiences of absence, anonymity,
intimacy, and voyeurism.

In 1979, Sophie Calle returned to Paris from a seven- Sowing Confusion

year trip round the world and tried to ease herself Sophie Calle's works consist of series of photographs
back into a now alien-looking city. She followed and text whose sober, documentary character is
unknown passers-by like a sleuth, documenting her contrasted with highly personal content. In these,
observations in photographs and notes, and finally she can mix real events with fictional and staged
exhibiting them. In 1980 she published her first book, occurrences. This happened twice over in various
Suite Venitienne, which developed out of probably works associated with Paul Auster's novel Leviathan
the best-known of her eaves-droppings on the private (1992). Auster based his heroine Maria Turner on
life of a stranger, whom she had followed all the way Calle's life and work. Sophie Calle's response was to
to Venice. turn the fictional art works of the heroine into reality
and to try to match her own life to that of Maria,
The Reality of Others thereby turning the traditional concept of reality on
Calle says that her works are about the psychology its head.
of interpersonal relationships. This includes setting
1953 Born in Paris.
out the most intimate details: she invited people she
1979 Returns to Paris after seven
did or did not know to sleep in her bed, and worked years traveling the world. For
over a week she invites friends,
as a chambermaid in a hotel so as to rummage in
acquaintances and strangers
guests' rooms and speculate about their lives. After to sleep in her bed and then
photographs them: The Sleepers
coming across the notebook of a certain "Pierre D'"
project.
she got in touch with the people listed in it. The results 1992 Paul Auster's novel Leviathan is
published; one of his characters
of her interviews she published in a daily column in
(Maria Turner) is based on Sophie
French newspaper Liberation over several weeks in Calle.
2007 Designs the French pavilion at the
the summer of 1983. The owner of the address book
Venice Biennale.
(the documentary film-maker Pierre Baudry) only
Sophie Calle lives and works in New
learnt after the event that he had become the sub¬
York and Malakoff near Paris.
ject of public interest, and threatened legal action;
FURTHER READING:
according to Sophie Calle, he had still not forgiven
Kathleen Merrill and Lawrence Rinder,
her years after. Sophie Calle: Proofs, Hood Museum of
Art, Darmouth College, Hanover, NH,
In later works, Calle gave up her anonymity in favor
1993
of direct encounters with those involved—but these Trudy Wilner Stack and others, Sophie
Calle ... , Center for Creative Photo¬
turned out no less provocatively. The Blind (1986) was graphy, University of Arizona, Tucson,
the outcome of her interviewing people born blind AZ, and New York, 1995

about their ideas of beauty. She juxtaposed their

answers with photographs of the interviewees, along
with photographs of their ideas of beauty.

above:
Sophie Calle, undated

following double page:

The Blind, 1986
 144|145 KIKI SMITH

DAVID HOCKNEY

TRACY EMIN

1960 John F. Kennedy

becomes President
of the United Statf

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960 1975

mum.......mum.....111111111111...min..
1880 1885 18 90 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Virgin Mary,1992, wax, fabric, wood and

steel, 171.5 x 66 x 36.8 cm, courtesy
PaceWildenstein, New York
United States imposes trade 1986 Olof Palme assassinated in Stockholm
embargo on Cuba 2006 Resumption of atomic research
1975 First*. tInternational1.Women
_, , s 1991 Dissolution of Warsaw Pact nmunmhwinn
program oy Iran
Conference in Mexico 1999 Poland, Hungary and the
1978 Karol Wojtyla elected Pope (John Paul II) Czech Republic join NATO

-I H 111 1 I I 1 1 I I 11II 1 1 1 I I I 111 | | 1 1 | 1 1 111 j | | | 1 llLLLLLLLllllllllll I III.I.I.I.

I I I IIII I II I I I I III I I I I I I I III I I I I I I I III I I I I I I I III I I I I I I I III I I I I I I IIII
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

KIKI SMITH
“The bodj is our common denominator and the stage for our pleasure and pain. Through it I aim to express who
we are, and how we live and die.” Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith was born in 1954 into an artist's family in The Beauty of Creation
Nuremberg. Her mother, Jane Smith, was an opera During the 1990s, Kiki Smith extended her range
singer; her father, Toni Smith, was one of the most of subjects by turning her attention to the relation¬
famous American sculptors of the 1960s and a fore¬ ship between Man, nature, and the cosmos. Her
runner of Minimalism. She sees the death of her fantastic, poetic arrangements are now based on
father in 1980 as marking her "real birth as an artist." myths, fairy tales, literary works, or works of art
history, even her own dreams. One of her cosmic
Art and Body scenarios consisting of stars and animal figures was
Human existence, Man's exposure to nature and the partly produced in cooperation with the architects
environment, the story of the human body, life and Coop Himmel(b)lau for the exhibition Paradise Cage
death form the subjects in Kiki Smith's art. She ini¬ in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles
tially produced sculptures made of various materials in 1996.
that represented fragments of the human body (such
as glass feet, above which an ankle-length skirt hangs
on strings) and organs (including a uterus in the form 1954 Born 18 January in Nuremberg,
Germany, the daughter of opera
of two nutshells). As a basis for her studies of the singer Jane Smith and sculptor
Tony Smith. Spends her child¬
female body, she used the English standard medical
hood and youth in New Jersey,
work Gray's Anatomy. With the help of the illustra¬ USA.
1976 Moves to New York.
tions, she translated the subject of anatomical dis¬
1980 Death of her father leads to her
section and fragmentation into graphical works, "real birth as an artist."
1988 Death of her sister, Beatrice.
drawing cell structures, blood and nerve pathways,
2000 Awarded Skowhegan Medal for
and other elements. Sculpture.
The first picture of an entire body, Untitled, appeared
Kiki Smith lives and works in New York.
in 1987. After the death of her sister, who died of AIDS
FURTHER READING:
in 1988, she produced increasing numbers of repres¬
Jon Bird (ed.), Otherworlds: The Art of
entations of human existence in all its vulnerability, Nancy Spero and Kiki Smith, Reaktion,
London, 2003
underlined by the use of delicate materials such as
Helaine Posner and Christopher Lyon,
paper, wax, porcelain, glass, and polyester. Her work Kiki Smith, Monacelli Press, New York,
2005
Tale (1992) shows a crawling female figure dragging
behind her a long trail of feces; Blood Pool (1992)
shows a female body in a fetal position with an open
spine. Kiki Smith also examined the figure of the
Virgin Mary in a number of works. Virgin Mary (1992)
is a true-to-life representation of the female body
made of wax, but with the skin missing in numerous
places. Questioned about the shocking impression
created by her body sculptures, Smith replied, "It is
not my work which is problematic, but the history of
our bodies, our love-hate relationship with our own
bodies."
Kiki Smith, undated
146|147 Seer (Alice II),2005, white
coachwork enamel on bronze,
162.6 x 182.9 x 114.3 cm, Galerie Lelong,
Paris
 Blood Pod, 1992, painted bronze,
35-6x 99.1 x 55,9, courtesy
PaceWildenstein, New York
■wm
 148|149 CINDY SHERMAN

JOSEPH BEUYS

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

1960 John F. Kennedy becomes

President of the United Sta
1950 End of racial segregation in the United States
1958 On the Road (Jack Kerouac)

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-197

III I I I 1 I I I III 1 I III I I I I I I 1 III II I I I I I I I III lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

1880 1885 1925 1930 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Untitled Film Still #206, 1989, color photo¬

graph, 6th edition, 171.4 x 114.3 cm. Courtesy
of the Artist and Metro Pictures
 1972 Munich massacre (attack on Israeli »A/ , t ......
\ , 2001 Women s voting rights rescinded in Kuwait
team at the Olympic Games) r °
1 following introduction in 1999
1 Construction of the Berlin Wall 1972 Heinrich Boll awarded Nobel Prize for Literature
1969 Yasser Arafat becomes 1988 Withdrawal of Soviet 2003 s f ^ j war
Chairman of the PLO tr00ps from Afghanistan

I I I ill I I I I I I I 1
1111,11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 Ml|i mu 1 iiiiiiiiii 1 min mi 11 mi 1 min mill 11 min nun 111 inn 11 iiiiiii 1 min..
1970 1975 1980 198S 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

CINDY SHERMAN
As a contribution to the recent history of art, the work of Cindy Sherman marks a redefinition and widening of
what contemporary photography can achieve by means of dressing up and staging scenes. With Sherman usually
in the title role, nothing is ever what it seems.

Cindy Sherman's pictures show things that in reality with badly placed wigs, obviously staged props, and
do not exist: they are made up just for the picture. clearly visible prostheses.
They are tableaux by a photographer acting both as The provocative character of Cindy Sherman's work
director and often the principal actor. is again evident in her series from 2003-2004. Her
Clowns are intended to show the "deeper character¬
Acting istics behind the clown’s masks." Once again, this
Striking examples can be found in Untitled Film Stills is a departure from familiar genre codes. Beneath
(1977-1980), a series of 69 black-and-white photo¬ the surface of face and gesture, something shines
graphs that are central to her early work. Dressing through that constitutes the disconcerting appeal of
up in various disguises so that her identity becomes her photographs and that lodges uncomfortably in
almost unrecognizable, Sherman takes on different the memory.
guises in mocked-up film stills featuring different
types of women, reminiscent of ig50s/ig6os film
cliches: "woman waiting,” the "vamp,” the "little
woman at home,” and so on. These parody the 1954 Born 19 January in Glen Ridge,
New Jersey.
role models the media offered at the time. In later 1972 Enrolls at the State University
of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo,
series of works, she parades her own person in con¬
majoring in painting but later
temporary ideal images of femininity and beauty, switching to photography.
1974 Founds Hallwalls Contemporary
conventional projections of sexuality, power, and
Art Center with Robert Longo,
violence in a male-dominated society, initially rather Charles Clough, and others.
1977 Moves to New York.
light-heartedly, and then more and more aggressively.
Cindy Sherman lives and works in
New York.
The Power of Presentation
In the 1980s, Sherman went over to color photography FURTHER READING:
Zdenek Felix and Martin Schwander
in substantially larger formats. She withdrew from
(eds.) and others, Cindy Sherman:
her own pictures, her place being taken by dolls and Photographic Work 1975-1995, Schirmer
Art Books, London, 1995
prostheses, which in the Disaster series she arranged
Johanna Burton (ed.) and others, Cindy
into grotesque studies of decay using waste products, Sherman, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,
2006
moldy food remnants, and body excretions. In the
Sex Pictures, grotesque body parts of mannequins,
prostheses, and anatomical models simulate sexual
acts.
In the History Portraits/Old Masters photographs
(1988-1990), Sherman echoes old master genres,
sometimes restaging famous pictures by Caravaggio
or Botticelli: "I treated these pictures as artistic
constructs just like everything you find in fashion
magazines these days," declares Sherman. She
challenges the idealizing character of famous
paintings, adopting the roles of the figures (men
and women), and sending up the celebrated images Cindy Sherman, undated
 150|151

Untitled Film Still #3,1977, black-and-

white photograph, 27th edition,
5 x 25.4 cm, courtesy of the Artist and
Metro Pictures
Untitled Film Still #188,1989, color photo¬
graph, 6th edition, no.5 x 166.4 cm,
courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures
 152|153 SHIRIN NESHAT

JOSEPH BEUYS

MONA HATOUM ——— ■■■■■■■. m.i.

1963 The Feminine Mystique

(Betty Friedan, American
sociologist)

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

.mi.......minimi.111111.... I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 11 I I I I I I 1 I I 1 I I I I I I 1 I I 1 I I I I 1 I 1 I I 1 1 I II 1 I 1 I I I II I
L 8 80 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Fervor, 2000, Production still

r: |H
IBB ,|P
* - *st If
j

& © a© © © © * f <?y1 ^
 1995
wrap the Reichstag in Berlin
1969 US moon landing 1990 Reunification
1997 Kofi Annan becomes Secretary-
of Germany
.....‘Mi............. ii 11 n 1111 n 11111111111 m 111
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995
SHIRIN NESHAT
“I come from a world which is in every respect a total antithesis of the Western world and which currently
represents the greatest threat to Western civilization ... The challenge for me is to mediate between these
cultures, the Orient and the Occident.” Shirin Neshat
Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin in Iran in 1957.
When she was 17, she went to Berkeley, University of
California, to study art. When she first visited her
family again in 1990, she began to work as an artist
under the impression of the profound changes hap¬
pening in her homeland as a result of the Islamic
revolution. Her photographs, videos, and films home
in on social developments in contemporary Islam
from the perspective of two highly different cultural
backgrounds. A particular issue for her is the strictly
controlled situation of women.
Politicization of Images
Her photographic series Women of Allah (1993-1997)
attracted a great deal of attention in Western art
circles immediately they were published. The black-
and-white photographs show armed Islamic
women—often Neshat herself—clothed in full-
length chadors. They present a contiguity of female¬
ness and violence, a tension between eroticism,
Christo and Jeanne-Claude 2003 Start of the Iraq War
2005 Dedication of the Holocaust Memorial (Memorial
to the Murdered Jews of Europe) (Peter Eisenman)
General of the United Nations 2005 Terror attacks in London
1999 War in Kosovo
2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 205.
innocence, and aggression. The uncovered areas of
skin are overwritten with Farsi texts written by
contemporary Iranian female poets, though their
viewpoints are highly divergent. Sometimes they
talk of being captive in Iranian culture, sometimes
about their enthusiasm for the Islamic revolution.
Visually, they are calligraphic ornamentation.
Double Projections
Neshat's videos are also notable for strong contrasts
between Western and Islamic culture, or generally
between men and women, individuals and society,
control and desire. On a formal level, the dualism
often takes the form of double projections. The black-
1957 Born 26 March in Qazvin, Iran.
and-white video installation Turbulent (1998) is the
1974 Goes to California to study art,
first part of a trilogy that continues with Rapture and later moving to New York.
1990 Visits Iran for the first time since
ends with Fervor. They focus on the separation of
1974, and explores the subject of
public and private space, and so with worlds defined the role of women in Islam.
1999 First International Prize at the
as male and female respectively. The viewer is placed Venice Biennale.
between two screens, one showing a man, the other
Shirin Neshat lives and works in
a woman, each of whom begins to sing in turn. The New York.
man faces the camera, with the public sitting behind
FURTHER READING:
him, while the woman occupies an empty room with Ladan Akbarnia, Speaking Through the
the camera circling round her. In the end, only the Veil: Reading Language and Culture in
the Photographs of Shirin Neshat, thesis
voice of the woman is heard, the man lapsing into (MA), University of California, Los
silence. Angeles, 1997
John B. Ravenal and others, Outer &
Neshat succeeds in putting across socio-political Inner Space: Pipilotti Rist, Shirin Neshat,
content by means of vivid images of Islamic society. Jane & Louise Wilson, and the History of
Video Art, Virginia Museum of Fine
This is a highly topical subject, but she does not offer Arts, Richmond, VA / University of
solutions or take sides. At its best, her work is an Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2002
invitation to open a dialog between the cultures.
At all events, it prompts thought about our own
notions of "foreignness."
left:
Fervor, 2000, production still
above:
Shirin Neshat, 2006
154|155 Rapture, 1999, production stills
 156|157 PIPILOTTI RIST

PABLO PICASSO
TACITA DEAN

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

.in.........1.....mimimim

Pimple Porno, 1992, video stills

 1986 Challenger space shuttle
explodes after takeoff
1990 OSCE conference in
1973 First oil crisis Paris declares the Cold
War to be over
illlllliililllllllilllllllllllllllllllllillmliimm...........mi...1111111.mini.1.111
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
PIPILOTTI RIST
“Video is like a compact handbag; it contains everything, from literature to painting to music” Pipilotti Rist
I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much, dated 1986, is
Pipilotti RistJs first video. After working with per¬
formance and pop music, at the end of the 1980s she
transferred her main artistic interest to video and
video installations. It shows the artist hopping up and
down while she hums to herself the title of the work.
Her videos catapulted her into the art business, as Rist
herself observed. In 1992, she became famous inter¬
nationally with Pimple Porno. The camera follows a
woman and a man as they approach each other
physically, while their sensory impressions are
translated visually into various nature motifs such
as flowers, waves, and clouds.
With the Power of Sight and Sound
Sexuality and eroticism, the difference between the
sexes and the physical appearance of men and
women, especially women, are frequent themes of
Pipilotti Rist. Her works are a mixture of visual and
musical elements with images that are then manip¬
ulated on the computer. They are often consciously
distorted and out-of-focus, showing pictures that
are washed out, bleached by the sun, and faded
into each other. The results are materializations
of Pipilotti Rist's utopias. The artist is convinced
that human and cultural progress is possible only
through positively formulated works. The result is a
cheerful, brightly colored, sensuous, poetic oeuvre
backed by gentle music. In it she attempts to "regain
the ingenuousness of childhood" and to permit the
observer to plunge into her world. A video in the
collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York
shows her sense of humor: in Ever is Over All (1997)
a woman holding an enormous phallic flower stalk
delightedly smashes the windows of parking cars
while a policewoman benevolently watches what
she is doing.
1990 Reunification of Germany
1994 Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin
and Shimon Peres awarded 2005 IRA ends armed hostilities after 34 years
Nobel Peace Prize 2006 War in Lebanon
2004 Tsunami flood catastrophe in Asia
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 205
Art Stations
Pipilotti Rist, whose real name is Elisabeth Charlotte
Rist, studied between 1982 and 1986 at the Hochschule
fur Angewandte Kunst (College of Applied Arts) in
Vienna before attending the video course at the Schule
fur Gestaltung (School of Design) in Basel. In 1997,
she was appointed Artistic Director of the Swiss
National Exhibition Expo.01, which was realized as
Expo.02. Pippilotti Rist has been awarded various
prizes, including the Premio 2000 at the Biennale in
Venice in 1997, the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in 1999, and
the oi award for extraordinary artistic or scientific
achievement in the field of multimedia, which was
awarded in 2004 and which included a nomination as
1962 Born Elisabeth Charlotte Rist
Honorary Professor at the Universitat der Kiinste 21 June in Grabs, Switzerland.
(Academy of Arts) in Berlin. 1982 Becomes a student at the College
of Applied Art in Vienna.
1986 Enrolls at the School of Design,
Basel, first video, audio works,
and installations.
1988 Becomes a member of the band
Les Reines Prochaines (until 1994)
1999 Takes part in the Venice Biennale.
Pipilotti Rist lives and works in Zurich.
FURTHER READING:
Peggy Phelan, Hans Ulrich Obrist and
Elisabeth Bronfen, Pipilotti Rist,
Phaidon, London and New York, 20m
John B. Ravenal and others. Outer fr
Inner Space: Pipilotti Rist, Shirin Neshat,
Jane fr Louise Wilson, and the History
of Video Art, Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts, Richmond, VA / University of
Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2002
Pipilotti Rist, undated
158|159

Ever is Over All, 1997, audio-video

installation
Selfless In The Bath Of Lava, 1994,

audio-video installation
 160 | 161 TRACEY EMIN

PABLO PICASSO PIPILOTTI RIST .

1971 Women gain voting

rights in Switzerlanc

1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-1975

........... i ...mini.nit i H-ii 1111111111111111111111111111 n 111111 n.i n 11 i l

1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Everyone I Have Ever Slept With

1963-1995, 1995, appliqued tent,
mattress and light, 122 x 245 x 215 cm
 1979 Joseph Beuys retrospective in 1990 Reunification of 2005 Pope John Paul II dies
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Germany
2007 Benazir Bhutto assassinated in Pakistan
Museum in New York
2004 Tsunami flood catastrophe in Asia
1980 Picasso Exhibition to mark the 50th
anniversary of the MoMA in New York 2003 Start of the Iraq War

mum 111111 m ............mini iimimmmim m mini miiiimmmimmmim in mu

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

TRACEY EMIN
For some, the British artist Tracej Emin strains the term art without scruple, while others see her as
something like a pop star. Either way, her work is provocative and entirely autobiographical, blatantly
recycling bits of her life.

Tracey Emin was born in the seaside town of Margate present, she rewrites the script with a positive out¬
in Kent in 1963. She left school at 13, two years before come: "Shane, Eddy, Tony, Doug, Richard—this one
the minimum leaving age, in order to "learn from life.” is for you." The adult Tracey comes on stage and
In 1983, she became a student at Maidstone College, blithely dances to a 1970s disco hit.
and subsequently the Royal College of Art in London. Emin often makes her past life a public talking point
Emin was one of the second wave of Young British in provocative fashion. She produces personal con¬
Artists (YBAs) who made themselves a reputation in fessions and drastic self-therapies in an attempt to
the 1990s by their ability to shock. Their great break¬ palliate the emotional trauma she parades. This is so
through came in 1997 when Charles Saatchi staged a in-your-face that viewers may feel directly addressed,
show called Sensation at the Royal Academy, which and respond just as directly.
later caused as much uproar in Berlin. Emin's frank
display of her sexuality and the intimate details of
her life earned her the label of the "bad girl" among
the YBAs and a national reputation for explicitness.
1963 Born 3 July in London.
Spends her childhood and youth
Autobiography Rehashed in Margate.
1980 Enrolls at Medway College of
Emin herself describes her work as "living autobiog¬
Design.
raphy." Drawings, neon works, objects, wall hang¬ 1984 Enrolls at Maidstone College of
Art.
ings, installations, films and books are about events 1987 Moves to London and studies at
in her life. She is the tragic victim: "I was abused, the Royal College of Art and
Birkbeck College, University of
I was sexually abused, I was treated like shit, I was London (philosophy).
deceived, I was lied to," she says in the video The 1993 She and Sarah Lucas open

The Shop.
Interview. 1999 My Bed is nominated for the

One of her more personal pieces is Everyone I Have Turner Prize.

2007 Creates the interior of the British
Ever Slept With 1963-1995, a small tent decorated pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
inside with cut-out fabric letters listing the names
Tracey Emin lives and works in London.
of all the people she had shared a bed with in her life
(destroyed in a fire in May 2004). In 1999, Emin’s FURTHER READING:
Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend
installation My Bed, an unmade bed covered in such (eds.), The Art of Tracey Emin, Thames
objects as a half-empty vodka bottles, underwear, and Hudson, London and New York,
2002
and condoms, was nominated for the Turner Prize Neal Brown, Tracey Emin, Tate,
and shown at the Tate. London / Harry N. Abrams, New York,
2006
In a mix of super-8 and video, she explores a might- Carl Freedman and Honey Luard,
have-been in her past life. Why I Never Became a Tracey Emin, Rizzoli, New York, 2006

Dancer looks back at her life as a girl in Margate and

countless sexual adventures. Thinking it might be a
way out of life in Margate, she dreams of becoming
a dancer, but then the local dancing competition put
an end to that idea. She breaks off her showpiece
Why I Never Became a Dancer, 1995,
when a chorus of men and former boyfriends jeer Single screen projection and sound shot
at her as a "slut." In a second part seen from the on Super 8
 162|163

Kiss me, Kiss me, Cover my Body in Love,

1996, neon, 76.2 x 91.4 cm
My Bed, installation, Turner Prize
Exhibition, 20 October 1999-23 January
2000, Tate Gallery, London
164|165 TACITA DEAN

DAVID HOCKNEY

KIKI SMITH

1950 End of racial segregation

in the United States

1941 b. Martha Argerich,

Argentinian pianist
1860-1910 IMPRESSIONISM CUBISM 1910-1920 EXPRESSIONISM 1920-1940 ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM 1940-1960 POP ART 1960-197

..HU.‘I".'I'"".........1.... 111111 III 11111 ..1. ...

1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965

Bubble House, 1999, film still

 2001 George W. Bush becomes
1988 Withdrawal of Soviet
President of the United States
troops from Afghanistan
2003 Start of the Iraq War
1990 Reunification of
2007 Benazir Bhutto assassinated in Pakistan
Germany
2001 Start of the war in Afghanistan

111111 i 111111
111111111111.1.11111.111111 ....1.1.11111...HU .
'70 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055

TACITA DEAN
Originally trained as a painter; since the 1990s British artist Tacita Dean has devoted herself to film, drawing,
andphotographj. The special feature of her work is an attempt to capture fleeting moments in images.

Tacita Dean is best known internationally for her
unconventionah6 mm films. Her long takes and
steady camera angles create an almost meditative
atmosphere focusing on the subject of time and telling
of its passing. According to Dean, "Everything I'm
attracted to is in on the point of disappearing."
Islands of Time
A number of the artist's films were made in her
adopted home city, Berlin. In Fernsehturm (TV Tower),
a camera installed on the balustrade of the TV tower
high above Alexanderplatz follows the slow revolu¬
tions of the restaurant around its axis. It records the
everyday labors of the waiters and waitresses serving
guests non-stop, laying tables and then clearing them
away as it gradually gets dark outside. Another film
meditation on the past, present, and forgetting, with
poetic shots of reflections on the facade, was made
at the highly symbolic Palast der Republik, the
of European films were made—one for the American
market with a happy ending, one for the Russians with
a tragic ending.
Among the artist's works is also a cloverleaf collec¬
tion that she has kept up since childhood: a graphic
example of her talent for tracking down the unob¬
trusive and yet precious things of life. Her works are
an invitation to follow suit.
1965 Born in Canterbury, England.
1988 Completes her studies at the
Falmouth School of Art.
1992 Graduates from the Slade School
of Fine Art, London.
1998 Disappearance at Sea is nomin¬
ated for the Turner Prize.
2000 Takes up a scholarship in Berlin.

former East German "people's palace" now being

Tacita Dean lives and works in Berlin.
demolished.
A potent source of effects in her work is light; in FURTHER READING:
Jean-Christophe Royoux and others,
Disappearance at Sea (1996) she focuses on a lighthouse Tacita Dean, Phiadon, London and
that comes on at the end of the day, alternating with New York, 2006
Tacita Dean, Briony Fer and Rina
twilight shots of the horizon out at sea. In The Green Carvajal, Tacita Dean: Film Works,
Ray (2001) she filmed a sunset so as to record the Miami Art Central / Charta, Miami,
2007
"green ray," a phenomenon of nature that takes
place at the very moment the sun vanishes below
the horizon off Madagascar.
Tacita Dean works with various artistic media that
are closely related. In her works on paper, the motif
of the storyboard frequently crops up; they appear like
visual drafts of a planned film. Her crayon drawings
on black panels, magnetic tape, or stone slabs were
often produced in several stages, deleted and then
gone over again, the various phases being document¬
ed photographically. A series of 20 photogravures
based on old picture postcards is furnished with
handwritten instructions or explanations. Dean called
the collection The Russian Ending (2001), alluding to a
practice in silent-film days when two export versions Tacita Dean, undated
The Green Ray, 2001, film still
 170|171
GLOSSARY
Abstract Expressionism See page 104
Academy
An art institution that provides training,
exhibitions, and prizes. The first modern
academies emerged in Italy during the
Renaissance. Traditionally they have exer¬
cised a huge influence on the development of
art, though they were frequently associated
with maintaining traditional values than with
encouraging modernizing tendencies. The
Academie Royale in Paris was founded in
1648, the Royal Academy in London in 1768,
the American Academy in New York in 1802.
Action
An art action, like a performance or a hap¬
pening, resembles an experimental theatrical
or musical performance rather than a tradi¬
tional art work. Unlike the latter, they all
take the form of an event, an occurrence that
exists only in the here and now. During a per¬
formance or a happening there is an audience
to witness or participate; an action, by con¬
trast, can take place without an audience and
then be observed only retrospectively (e.g. by
means of photographs, video etc.). See Body
art
Art Deco
A decorative style named after a major exhi¬
bition in Paris, the Exposition Internationale
des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in
1925. It was the direct successor to Art
Nouveau, but in contrast to that style Art
Deco is characterized by simple, geometrical
shapes. Luxurious materials such as bronze,
ivory, lacquer, and ebony were frequently
used.
Atelier
(French) An artist's studio or place of work.
Baroque
The predominant style in European art from
c. 1600 until the middle of the 18th century. It
is characterized by the use of dynamic move¬
ment and dramatic effects. The Baroque style
was thus opposed to the preceding style,
Mannerism, which was noted for its intellec-
tualism and emotion introversion. The
Baroque gave way to Rococo.
Biennale
Any international art exhibition that take
place every two years. One of the best known
is the Venice Biennale.
Body art
An art form in which an artist uses his or her
own body as a medium. Body art, which
developed at the end of the 1960s largely in
New York, includes the body in action or
manipulations of the surface of the body,
including the infliction of injury. Most body
art takes the form of single events that are
usually recorded by means of film, video, or
photography. See Action.
Caravaggisti See page 24
Collage
(French coHer, "to glue") An art technique in
which newspaper cuttings, pieces of fabric,
wallpaper, cut-up pictures etc. are stuck
together to form pictures.
Dada
An anti-art movement that emerged in Zurich
in 1916. The name supposedly harks back to a
French children's name for a hobby-horse,
but in fact it was made up. A protest against
the pretensions and complacency of art, it
employed nonsensical and anarchic actions
and texts. Among the protagonists of the
movement were the writer Flugo Ball and the
painters Tristan Tzara and Hans Arp. It
served as the forerunner of Surrealism.
documenta
A large, international exhibition of contem¬
porary art held in Kassel, Germany, every five
years.
Genre painting See page 59
History painting
Depictions of historical events, often in con¬
junction with themes from classical mytho¬
logy or antiquity. During the Renaissance,
history painting developed into an independ¬
ent genre. At times, especially during the
17th and 18th centuries, it was regarded as the
highest form of art after religious painting.
Impressionism See page 65
Installation
A three-dimensional art work set up in an
existing space. A great variety of materials
and media can be used.
Minimal Art
Minimal Art arose during the 1960s as a reac¬
tion to Abstract Expressionism (page 104).
Its aim was to abandon all forms of represen¬
tation, symbolism, and metaphor. This
resulted in almost exclusively sculptural
works that were reduced to simple basic
forms, interest being focused less on the
works themselves than on their relationship
with the surrounding space. Characteristic
of Minimal Art is above all the striving for
objectivity, depersonalization, and schematic
clarity.
Neo-Classicism See page 55
Nouveau Realisme
(French, "New Realism") An expression
coined by the French art critic Pierre Restany
to identify a group of French artists that
includes Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, and
Arman. The group rejected the idea of free
abstraction and used existing objects and
material they found by chance to produce
their art. The objects came to serve as an
ironic commentary on contemporary society.
Nouveau Realisme was a parallel movement
to Pop Art.
Oil painting
A painting technique in which an oil (usually
linseed, poppy, or walnut) is used as a me¬
dium to bind color pigments. On exposure to
the air, the oil gradually dries to form a hard
surface. The technique developed in the
Netherlands in the 15th century and from the
16th century was the predominant painting
medium, largely because of its versatility.
They can be applied either as a translucent
glaze or opaquely. When used thickly, the
very paint and brushwork can contribute
to a work's expressiveness. It is also capable
of extremely fine gradations of color and
tone.
Pastel
Pastel is a form of dry painting executed with
drawing sticks consisting of compressed
powder color and a binding medium (e.g.
gum arabic). The colors can be blended on
paper to produce soft transitions, or applied
in individual lines or dots. Pastel smudges
easily and so must be sprayed with a color¬
less fixative solution.
Plein-air painting See page 77
Pop Art
An art movement emerging in Britain and the
United States during the 1960 and lasting
until the mid 1970s. Rejecting abstract art.
Pop artists aimed to use popular items from
everyday life, notably from popular culture
and advertising, in artistic contexts—film
stars, pop musicians, automobiles, comics,
beer cans, flags etc. Important pop artists
include Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein,
Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, and Claes
Oldenburg.
Renaissance See page 16
Retrospective
("Looking back") An art exhibition that
presents a complete overview of a specific
creative periods or the entire oeuvre of an
artist.
Rococo
(from the French rocaille, "sea shell"). A style
in European art that formed the final phase
of the Baroque era. Extending from c. 1700
until c. 1780, it replaced heavy, dramatic
Baroque forms with light, intricate, and play¬
ful images that often included representa¬
tions of flowers, fruit, and garlands. In
Rococo painting, which was primarily found
at court and in the salons of the wealthy, the
pictures are characterized by delicate, fine,
detailed ornamentation. The Rococo style
thus provided a playful end to the Baroque
era. It flourished in particular in France,
Germany, and Austria.
Salon See page 53
Signature
(Lat. signore, "to denote") With a signa¬
ture—written out in full, abbreviated, or in
the form of a sign or symbol—artists identify
a work as their own. Signatures were cus¬
tomary even on painted Greek vases; during
the Middle Ages they were rare, and works
were initially signed only on the frame. With
the rise of the middle class as purchasers of
art during the Italian Renaissance and later
in Netherlandish painting during the 17th
century, the signature became a customary
(authenticating) feature.
Still-life
The representation of lifeless objects such as
everyday objects, dead animals, and (above
all) fruit and flowers. By including depictions
of fading blossoms or a skull, so-called van-
itas still-lifes draw attention to the transient
nature of all things. The symbolic meaning of
still-lifes was important primarily during the
Baroque era.
Surrealism
(French, "beyond reality"). The Surrealist
movement, which came into being in Paris,
was a continuation of Dada. Its central figure
was the poet Andre Breton. The painters
around Breton did not want to depict the vis¬
ible world of everyday life, but to reveal the
world that lies concealed in our unconscious
minds, glimpsed in dreams. And as in
dreams, in their paintings apparently uncon¬
nected or absurd things come together to
form strange, even disturbing images. The
range of styles was very wide. While artists
like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte present¬
ed works with an almost photographic accur¬
acy, painters like Joan Miro, Andre Masson,
and Hans Arp created strange, often distort¬
ed or child-like shapes vaguely reminiscent of
human or animal forms.
Watercolor
A thin, translucent painting medium using
water-soluble colors. Watercolor painting is
one of the oldest painting techniques; it was
used by the ancient Egyptians to paint on
papyrus in the Books of the Dead (2nd cen¬
tury BC).
 172|173

INDEX

Abramovic, Marina 128-131 Labille-Guiard, Adelaide 52/53

Armstrong Forbes, Elizabeth Adela 76/77 Lama, Giulia 44/45
Anguissola, Sofonisba 14-17 Lempicka, Tamara de 96-99
Leyster, Judith 28-31
Beaux, Cecilia 74/75 Longhi, Barbara 20/21
Bonheur, Rosa 62/63
Bourgeois, Louise 106-109 Mayer, Constance 60/61
Merian, Maria Sibylla 34-37
Calle, Sophie 140-143 Modersohn-Becker, Paula 78-81
Camera, Rosalba 42/43 Morisot, Berthe 64-67
Cassatt, Mary 68-71 Miinter, Gabriele 86-89
Claudel, Camille 82/83
Neshat, Shirin 152-155
Dean, Tacita 162/163
O'Keeffe, Georgia 90-93
Emin, Tracey 160/161 Oppenheim, Meret 110-113
Peeters, Clara 26/27
Fontana, Lavinia 18/19
Rist, Pipilotti 156-159
Gentileschi, Artemisia 22-25 Ruysch, Rachel 38-41
Genzken, Isa 132/133
Gerard, Marguerite 58/59 Saint Phalle, Niki de 114/115
Gonzales, Eva 72/73 Sherman, Cindy 148-151
Sirani, Elisabetta 32/33
Hatoum, Mona 136/137 Smith, Kiki 144-147
Hemessen, Catharina van 10/11
Hesse, Eva 116-119 Therbusch, Anna Dorothea 46/47
Hoch, Hannah 94/95
Holzer, Jenny 134/135 Vigee-Lebrun, (Marie Luise) Elisabeth 54-57
Horn, Rebecca 120-123

Kahlo, Frida 100-103

Kauffmann, Angelica 48-51
Kollwitz, Kathe 84/85
Krasner, Lee 104/105
Kruger, Barbara 124-127

TEXTS

Melanie Klier: pp. 34, 42, 62, 78, 86

Doris Kutschbach: p. 46
Petra Larass: pp. 14,18, 20, 22, 26, 28, 38, 48, 54, 68, 72
Claudia Stauble: pp. 44, 52, 58, 76
Christiane Weidemann: pp. 10, 82, 84, go, 94, 96,100,104,106,110,114,
116,120, 124, >28, 132, 134, 136, 140,144,148,152,156, 160,164
Andrea WeiSenbach: pp. 32, 60, 64, 74, glossary, timeline
PHOTO CREDITS
The illustrations in this publication have been kindly provided by
the museums, institutions and archives mentioned in the captions,
or taken from the Publisher's archives, with the exception of the
following:
Akg-images, Berlin: pp. 107 left, m, 112,121
Artothek, Weilheim: Frontispiz, pp. 40/41, 68, 89
Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, New York: pp. 124-127
The Bridgeman Art Library: pp. 76, 77, n8
Courtesy Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Koln: pp. 132,133
Courtesy Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman
Gallery, New York and Paris: pp. 164-167
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery: pp. 152-155
© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York,
Photo: David Heald: p. 134
Courtesy Hauser 81 Wirth Zurich London: pp. n6,117,119,156,158,
159
Michael Herling, Sprengel Museum Hannover: p. 115 left
Kunstsammlung Bottcherstra&e/Paula Modersohn-Becker-
Museum: p. 78
laif: pp. 141,157
Massimo Listri, Florenz: p. 114
Rafael Lobato, courtesy Cheim 81 read, New York: pp. 108/109
Attilio Marazano: pp. 128,130,131
Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures: pp. 148-151
© The Museum of Modern Art/SCALA Florence: p. 113
Photography by Ellen Page, courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York:
PP- 144, 147
Photography by Ellen Labenski, courtesy PaceWildenstein,
New York: p. 145
Photography by Aram Jibilian, courtesy PaceWildenstein,
New York: p. 146
Paula Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen: p. 79
Massimo Piersanti, courtesy Fundacio Espai Poblenou, Barcelona
p. 120
Larry Rivers: p. 115 right
Ullstein Bild: p. 135
Stephen White, courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube London:
pp. 160,162,163
Courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube London: p. 161
Philippe Migeat, courtesy White Cube London and Centre
Pompidou, Paris: pp. 136,137 left
Johnnie Shand Kydd: p. 137 right
Edward Woodman, courtesy Jay Jopling / White Cube London:
pp. 138,139
3 ns? 00015401 3

\
MARINA ABRAMOVIC SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA
ELIZABETH ARMSTRONG FORBES CECILIA BEAUX ROSA
BONHEUR LOUISE BOURGEOIS SOPHIE CALLE ROSALBA
CARRIERA MARY CASSATT CAMILLE CLAUDEL TACITA
DEAN TRACEY EMIN LAVINIA FONTANA ARTEMISIA
GENTILESCHI ISA GENZKEN MARGUERITE GERARD EVA
GONZALES MONA HATOUM CATHARINA VAN HEMESSEN
EVA HESSE HANNAH HOCH JENNY HOLZER REBECCA
HORN FRIDA KAHLO ANGELICA KAUFFMANN KATHE
KOLLWITZ LEE KRASNER BARBARA KRUGER ADELAIDE
LABILLE-GUIARD GIULIA LAMA TAMARA DE LEMPICKA
JUDITH LEYSTER BARBARA LONGHI CONSTANCE MAYER
MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER
BERTHE MORISOT GABRIELE MONTER SHIRIN NESHAT
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE MERET OPPENHEIM CLARA PEETERS
PIPILOTTI RIST RACHELRUYSCH NIKI DE SAINT PH ALLE
CINDY SHERMAN ELISABETTA SIRANI KIKI SMITH
ANNA DOROTHEATHERBUSCH ELISABETH VIGEE-LEBRUN

The most important women artists from the Renaissance until todaj
are profiled in this richly detailed and comprehensive survej. With
brillant reproductions, timelines, succinct biographies, and additional
information on resources for further study this volume illustrates
the remarkable artistic contributions of women throughout history.

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